From Solo to Trio
by Arual-san
Summary: Fire Lady Ursa is sentenced to die at the hands of her own nation. Teaming up with Katara and Toph, will Zuko be able to rescue her in time? Takes place after The Boiling Rock. No finale spoilers. No Zutara.
1. Chapter 1

Why the design and location of the Western Air Temple different from the rest of its sisters was anyone's guess

Why the design and location of the Western Air Temple different from the rest of its sisters was anyone's guess.

Aang had popped in with the information that it was exclusively populated by the female airbenders and that the statue towering over them in the east wing was of Avatar Yangchen. He was feeling mighty proud of himself for providing the glimpse into his culture until Sokka pointed out that neither fact answered the question of architecture.

"I don't know why they built it upside down," Aang admitted sheepishly. He nudged Teo, the nearest to him. "It's still pretty, right?"

"Yeah, that's got to be some super sticky glue that's keeping us from thundering down into that quarry." Sokka's input had been of his staple sarcastic nature but once he took in his own words his face grew taut with horror. "Hey wait, we're not putting on lives on the line for-!?"

"This temple's been here for thousands of years." As Katara made to calm her brother from his shenanigans she ladled the just finished rice from the fat, black kettle. "It's not going to just decide to fall under a little extra weight."

"But I – it-" Sokka protested, still at the start of a potential panic attack. "_What's holding us up!?_ It is some freaky _air_ magic or something!? Is this building just a gigantic nail hammered into the rock, because nails rust and rock breaks apart and-!?"

"Mind shredding some light our way, baby girl?" Chit Sang asked coolly of Toph and far had the blind girl come in that she didn't take it as belittling but as it was intended in comradeship.

"Not to worry there, O' Spaz of all Spazes," she assured Sokka. "Each of the buildings is snuggled in nice and deep into the ledge. It's only a few yards from reaching the surface above actually. They're reinforced and pressure-sealed with about ten stone layers piled one atop another that none of you can see. Those girl airbenders knew what they were doing all right."

"So – so we're safe!?" Sokka begged of her.

"Plenty."

Sokka heaved a sigh but it became a strangled sound like a pentapus lodged in his throat at Toph's next words. "As long as that chandelier pillar thing there-"– she pointed –"Remains perfectly safe from all harm."

"Wha-what!?"

"Everything that is this temple hooks up to that pillar, of course," Toph said as though it were common knowledge. "If it were to get damaged at all then there'd be a chain reaction and the supports would cut…maybe that one-" – Toph swiped a hand to a neighboring building and Sokka jolted in place, eyes bugging in panic – "Or the one we're sitting on _right now_."

Sokka took the news with gentlemanly composure.

"_Gaaah!_ How're we supposed to stay alive with you crazy benders bending your junk where ever you please!? We should all be dead already! We should be _dead_ and _buried_ under a thousand feet of rock at the bottom of the world!"

Toph had to clench her teeth to keep herself contained but anyone who looked could see that her belly was shaking with silent laughter.

"What if Combustion Man had hit it!? What if _I_ had hit it practicing with my boomerang!? What if-!?"

"We've got to protect it!" agreed Aang, jumping to his feet and joining in on the hysteria. "What would happen if it were to go out when we were sleeping!?"

"What if a rapid woodpecker-squirrel came and pecked at it for worms!? What then!? Huh!?"

From clenching her teeth, Toph now had to bite her lip hard to keep from giving herself away. Some of the others had started to chuckle under their breathes but Katara looked disapproving of the prank.

As the boys scrambled to do anything and everything in their power to protect the stone pillar they fretted over what to use for bird repellent, how exactly to tie the cloth tarp up around the surrounding pillars and in the process half scared the wits out of Zuko, getting into his personal space in half-crazed pleas to help them in their mad dash.

Toph had Sokka and Aang working frantically for nothing and she was clutching her stomach for laughter. "It hurts! _It hurts!_ Ha, ha, ha!"

"_Sooo_ I made a trip to a nearby village in the Fire Nation and-" Haru paused when he was passed a ration of rice. "Thank you, Katara. Anyway I thought it would be a good idea to keep tabs on what's happening. They stomped us good in the invasion so the people can't be entirely ignorant that it occurred, right?"

"The Fire Nation isn't always the most loyal to its own citizens," remarked Katara with no little amount of bitterness after the incident in the floating village on the river, earning her an annoyed look from Zuko who, despite the insult, didn't direct his gaze at her. Katara handed out the next ration. "Aang, Sokka, get down here for dinner."

"But-!" they chorused.

"Toph was just messing with you. It's not my fault if your portions get cold."

"Anyway," said Haru, "I picked up some a few things while I was there, food, supplies to fix Appa's armor, you know, and I found this flyer." Haru laid flat the parchment so that all could see.

"Mind reading it aloud, Caterpillar Lips?" Toph threw out between bites of rice. Colors and text never did it for her.

Toph's inventive nickname for him brought a chuckle from the teenager and he stroked his moustache in show. "Says that since Sozin's Comet in coming in a week the Fire Lord seems to think that with the phenomenal upgrade in powers that ruler of an entire nation is too meek of a title. He's planning on crowning himself Phoenix Lord…whatever that means."

Zuko groaned lowly at the lengths his father's arrogance would reach. Was Phoenix Lord even a real title or was Ozai just attaching it to his name to crush even lower beneath his soles in fear the captured capitals of Omashu and Ba Sing Se?

"Phoenix, huh?" Toph scoffed. "Sorry to break it to you Twinkletoes but it seems your training's all been for naught if that hothead has infinite lives to relive held back on the shelves. Poof, I'm born again! Poof!"

"It'd still be fun to poof him out of existence a few times. Wa-ter-ben-ding-" said Sokka in the low, very deep voice of the giant bullfrogs, making overexaggerated dancing, skipping and chopping movements in a graceless imitation of Katara.

"Here comes an avalanche of boulders," said Toph.

"Poof!" Sokka rammed his arms toward the ground.

"There's Pipsqueak body-slamming the big jerk," The Duke contributed with joy.

"Poof!"

Sokka continued 'poofing' away the Fire Lord in any such demise suggested from the group of eleven but Zuko wasn't interested in the diversion, especially not when the only link they had to the outside world was spread before him open for the taking. Take it he did and every article did he read to try and get an edge on what the father he'd disowned was planning but of course nothing was given away, not even signups for new recruits to join in on an upcoming endeavor.

He'd been about to discard it when he saw that there was a backside.

All of the group, excluding Toph, turned to stare at him with the same set of questioning eyes and Zuko realized the gasp he uttered must've been aloud and noticeable to boot.

"Everything all right there, lad?" asked Hakoda with genuine concern even for the son of the enemy. Zuko had after all aided in the Boiling Rock rescue and for that he and Suki treated him with more respect than they'd have normally.

"I – y-yeah," Zuko stammered to get the eyes anywhere but on him. "Just choked on a little rice, that's all."

"Is that wink toward that my cooking doesn't measure up to _royalty_ standards?" Katara asked of him lightly though there was a challenge not well hidden beneath the layers. "Shall I cook you something _else_, Zuko? After all we have _tables and tables_ of selections to choose from."

"Wha-? No, it's fine. Anyone can cook rice and-"

It was the wrong thing to say. Anything the banished prince said was the wrong thing to say in Katara's ears.

"Oh so _anyone_ can do it, you say? Even a filthy water tribe peasant like me?"

"Easy, Katara," said her father gently, wanting to head off the feud before it even began.

"He's not worth the effort," Katara huffed and hers were the last words spoken around the fire before sleeping bags and dibs on the best places were called out for the night.

For a painfully long hour did Zuko wait until the very last of them was asleep.

Only then did he trust himself to unroll the parchment again.

Again it showed the same row of traitors to the crown. The only face Zuko saw was the one of a regal-looking woman with long, flowing black hair. She was Fire Lady Ursa, though not accredited so and mixed along with the rest of the so-called scum and tyrants.

_Now I realize that banishment is far too merciful a sentence for treason,_ echoed the cold voice of Ozai just before he had attempted to fry with lightning his own flesh and blood.

_He wouldn't,_ argued Zuko with himself for any shred of decency of his father that remained.

The truth stared him in the face. The mother he'd not seen in five long years was sentenced to die in only a day's time.

Zuko stared up, up and up at the massive war balloon that had previously been in service to his sister and groaned. He looked to the furry, white hill that was Appa and moaned. He might as well have tattooed a great big arrow on his-

"Argh! Scratch that!" Zuko shook his head free of the thought as soon as it came.

What he needed was the balloon he had arrived in, small and inconspicuous…and in ruins at the bottom of a boiling lake. Thoughts of the prison brought thoughts of Mai, how she had turned on her princess and comrade so that he could get away. Not witnessing the finale of said incident, he wondered how she'd held up under the duel forces of Azula and Ty Lee and if there were anything left of her to stow away in a prison cell.

_So many years of trying to raise the perfect doll,_ thought Zuko of her parents. _Her family will be ruined._

He tried to push the less than pleasant thoughts from his mind, exploring the innards of the mechanical beast. He found an escape balloon, which he put into commission in mere seconds.

Groggily drifting in her sleeping bag, Katara awoke. She gave a great yawn and sleepily lumbered to answer the call of nature that had woken her.

What she saw on reaching the landing strip shocked out of her any forms of weariness.

"Yip yip!" she called out, running along Appa's wide tail and jumping into the saddle as he took off.

Zuko's face went slack when he heard but still he faced forward and, subtly so that she couldn't see, fired more fuel for the tank. Alas his balloon had only departed and hadn't the time to pick up speed so Appa was along it in moments. Katara didn't try reasoning; she didn't try talking it out. In one great leap she overtook the distance between and landed on the lip of the basket. There she tackled a startled Zuko and in those few seconds, from her expression, Zuko wondered if this girl was somehow channeling Azula's spirit.

They were both out of the balloon and skidding on the ledge before Avatar Yangchen's statue.

"_You traitor! You were just waiting for us to let our guard down!_" With great ferocity Katara drew up her element from the nearest fountain and used it on him like whips. Every time he tried to move Zuko was smacked back down. "_I warned you!_ I _warned_ you and now you'll get what I promised you!"

"W-wait!" he managed to say when he caught a breath of air. "I left a note! Chit Sang can teach the Avatar firebending while I'm away! I'll only be gone for-!"

"_Don't lie to me!_" And so angry were her words she could've spit acid. "You think just because you saved my father we can start a new slate!? You're _wrong!_" She banged and bruised and abused Zuko but he didn't lift a finger against it.

Katara thrust back her water-lengthened arms for a powerful attack…and found herself lifted into the air.

"Wha-? Appa? Appa, you put me down this instant!"

The great beast whined like a two-ton dog.

"I mean it, Appa! Don't you make me get firm with you!"

His great furry head lolled back and forth on its hinge and Katara was tossed side to side like a chew toy.

Katara let loose a deep growling sigh. "_Fine_. I won't hurt him, not _physically_ anyway. Why you're not supportive of me I don't understand. Don't you remember all the fireballs he shot at you?"

Apparently Appa didn't, that or the gratitude he felt from the Lake Laogai incident had replaced any hard feelings. He set her back on the ground lightly. She saw that nearby the balloon had been saved from destruction by Appa who had lugged it in.

Turned away, Zuko mostly stifled a groan.

Katara rolled her eyes. She saw something on the ground then and vaguely recalled Zuko holding something. "Why did you take this parchment, Zuko? It was supposed to be shared amongst us."

There was no reply he was willing to give.

She picked it up and scanned over the contents. "Just a normal flyer…a festival…a lost pet…an _execution_ – your nation is really sick, you know that, killing people for having different beliefs and-" Katara's words faded. "Wait a second…golden eyes, that face structure, this woman is she…?"

"Yes." There was no use denying it.

Katara looked haunted. "The Fire Lord is really…to his own wife?"

"Yes."

"You told me your mother was dead."

"I thought she was. The gaps in the story were only just filled in to me during the invasion. Apparently the Fire Lord wishes to tie up any loose strings that could serve to embarrass him."

Katara grimaced. If Zuko's devotion to ending the Fire Nation's reign of terror were genuine and he had really severed all ties from his war-hungry father and sister than it could be certain that the same fate awaited Zuko upon capture.

"I know my word accounts for little to you. Maybe I could leave something important of mine behind to ensure that I return?"

"So you plan on taking on solo an entire fortress manned with firebenders _already_ hopped up for blood?"

"I managed to save your friend from Zhao's imprisonment without using bending at all."

"Aang said you wouldn't have gotten out of it had he not rescued _you_ the rescuer."

"The fortress isn't far from here," Zuko continued on nonetheless. "I'll only be gone a couple days."

"_We'll_ only be gone a couple days."

"Pardon?"

"I believe she said she and I will be accompanying you to said location." Toph emerged from the darkness of a building entrance, privy to all or most of the conversation. "Kind of slow on the uptake, aren't you, Princess?"

"Princess?" Zuko repeated, insulted.

"Sure. Joined to the ranks of Twinkletoes, Sugar Queen and Snoozles, you should be honored."

Zuko would've growled in reaction to the demeaning nickname had Katara, more of a Lemon Queen right then than Sugar, hadn't been standing there.

Katara frowned. "It's not very nice to interrupt conversations, Toph."

"It's also not very nice to beat the snot out of a comrade and wake me up from the awesome dream I was having," Toph shot back. "Geez, I could feel you guys stomping around all the way up to my knees."

"Go back to sleep. I have this under control."

"I hope you know what element we're all standing on right now," teased Toph, curling her toes over the stone below. "I could have everyone up in an earthquake before you could blink twice."

"_Toph_..."

"So the solo mission has turned into a duo mission, you say? Why Katara, you were so dubious about taking this on, why not take the help you can get?"

"_Don't_ call us a duo," growled Katara under her breath, glaring away from them both.

"Aang and Sokka both had their little adventures with the ol' boy, I'd say it's high time that you and I do the same! I've had enough of being cooped up here! I want some action!"

Toph grabbed up either reluctant party by the arm to infect with her enthusiasm. "Oh yeah! I've got a good feeling about this!"


	2. Chapter 2

While Toph had been bursting with pent up energy at the start of their trip the paradigm quickly turned

While Toph had been bursting with pent up energy at the start of their trip the paradigm quickly turned. Flying was one of the few things in the world that made her truly blind but as much as she'd have liked to sleep it off until they reached the fortress Toph couldn't be certain that Katara wouldn't shove Zuko into the balloon's stove.

_Bah, why do I have to be the one to keep the peace?_ thought Toph to herself. _That's airhead's job, not mine._

Half because of her griping stomach, Toph sent her companions a withering glance. They could've lost their voices for all that they had said since takeoff. Katara fumed quietly in a corner and Zuko checked their fuel supply all too often.

Something spasmed in Zuko's leg when he moved and he tried to cover it up. Katara was there in an instant, pushing him none too gently to the floor and he and Toph started with the thought that she was going to kill him on the spot. She got out her water from a pouch but, instead of blasting him with it, coated it over her hands like a pair of gloves.

"What are you-?" Zuko started in bewilderment.

"Healing," said Katara curtly as she moved the glowing water over him. "If you go into battle at less than 100 it'll affect our performance overall, on top of us being already outnumbered. The bruises haven't set. They're not visible but I can gauge the general locations. Hold still."

"Uh…okay." Under the care of a scary-looking waterbender that hated him he might've preferred the bruises.

The healing waters hovered over him and had he been a girl Zuko might've swooned over how good it felt. If only he'd known a waterbender after the ill-fated Agni Kai with the Fire Lord.

"All done."

Zuko blinked and he realized he must've been close to dozing off. It seemed to have only taken seconds but when he moved his limbs they were no longer sore. After it had been she who'd injured him Katara had now healed him.

"Err…thank you," he had to say though he expected her to throw it back in his face.

Katara nodded and for once she didn't look like she was going to bite his head off. Healing sessions however calmed the healer every bit as they healed the patient so it might've meant nothing.

When he opened his knapsack Zuko was blasted back to reality by a screeching mass of fur that collided with his face.

"_Ahh! Your rabbit-monkey thing is-!_" yelled Zuko, trying to pry a frightened Momo from him where he was crawling all over him at top speed, claws out and teeth bared. All Momo had wanted was the food inside the pack but then the world had gone dark.

"Momo!" tried Katara, reaching out, trying to grab him. "Momo, calm down!"

The little lemur took a second out from his wild freak fest to hiss at her with crazed green eyes and he was back to using Zuko like a jungle gym where the teen tried all too slow and in harassed bids to try and catch him.

"Don't you try to swat him!" yelled Katara at him.

"Get it off then!" Zuko yelled back. A claw punctured his skin and cried out. "Oww! _Oww!_ _Get it off!_" Momo decided then to duck inside the teen's shirt to get away from all the high voices and with his soft, downy fur Zuko's cries of pain mixed with strangled bursts of air surging out from his teeth that were attempts to keep from laughing.

"Heh, heh, _oww!_ Trap it in a bubble or someth- _eeek!_ Can't – _argh_ – take this!" And only those few words could Zuko manage before he got caught up in a forced and ongoing tickle torture from which he could not escape.

For a few moments did Katara stop entirely in her attempts to help to just stare upon the most strange and almost creepy sight of the uptight prince laughing so hard and desperately that he was rolling around in the basket. Her mouth hung ajar and an eyebrow rose.

"_Katara!_" Toph had to yell in her face to snap her awake.

"Oh…umm right," But when she was about to use her bending, Katara saw that Momo had finally stopped. A huddled lump shivered over Zuko's stomach and above a long white tail brushed the underside of his chin. It wandered along higher on his face and found his nose.

Zuko arched back, face pulled taut, stiff as a board.

"Don't you do it!" warned Katara.

"But-!" He protested as the tail flickered back and forth over the sensitive area.

"Ah, ah-" she wagged her finger.

"It-!"

"_No!_" Katara went from glaring from him to kneeling next to the shaking lump. She lifted Zuko's shirt and found Momo there, stationary but not at all calm. "Hey, Momo, it's Katara. A little scared there?"

He continued to shake and shiver.

"You know we didn't mean to toss you into the basket with the other supplies, don't you? We'd never to that to our sweet, little peach." Katara reached out slowly, gently and she was able to pet him. "That's a good boy."

Up above, Zuko was grinding his teeth and his eyes were rolling to fight it as the tail at his nose prodded him further and further.

"Why don't you come onto my shoulder?" Katara persuaded and the lemur lifted his head in interest. "There's a nice scratch behind the ears in it for you."

Zuko couldn't take it anymore. His eyes shut and his head rolled back to sneeze…and then the stressor was gone. He looked and saw Momo atop Katara's shoulder milking the attention she offered for all that it was worth. His shoulders fell in a deep sigh and in that same movement he was on the bottom of the basket.

Saved from a mauling by Katara's persuasion, still processing the weirdness of it all, Zuko caught himself chuckling, very lightly and softly.

As she made to comfort Momo, Katara looked to him from the corner of her eye. She'd never heard Zuko laugh before, didn't think he had it in him. Despite herself, that she was supposed to be mad at him, it made her smile. She healed him for a second time that night.

"All of us don't need to be awake right now," said Katara when things had calmed down and Momo was nestled in her lap like a baby. "The fortress is a good nine hours away and getting a few hours sleep is better than none."

"I can take the first shift," Zuko volunteered right away.

"I'd rather not have you exerting yourself directly after two healings. It might negate some of the effects."

"Not to be rude but this is _my_ mission. The two of you just invited yourselves along for whatever reason, boredom or what have you."

"Don't be like that, Zuko," said Toph now that she was calming to the movements of the balloon. "Sure I'm bored and Aang needs training in these last crucial days but this is important. We can't ask you to just stay at the temple. We're not monsters."

"We'll rescue your mom," said Katara with kindness since she could sense just how worried Zuko was.

Again his former enemies treated him with decency and caring that Zuko felt he had not yet deserved after all he had done to hurt them. They'd even saved his life on more than one occasion and still he had hunted them without mercy. Zuko had assisted both Aang and Sokka to reach their goals and had earned their trust and yet he still hadn't felt comfortable in asking any one of them for anything. He had a debt to pay and even then the two girls were raising the price ever higher.

"I've been wondering," said Katara, curious now that they were stuck in the little space together, "After the siege at the Northern Water Tribe…where did you and your uncle go? We had a little break but then we met that _charming_ sister of yours."

"Uncle and I had prices put on our heads the same as you."

"Really?"

"_Yes_ really. Is it _so_ hard to comprehend that there are bad people in the world without the same set of morals as you? There are devils and demons in this world who only wear human skin."

He hadn't meant to snap, especially not to Katara, and so nodded his head in apology.

Katara took in the sight of him, more specifically to the charred scar that took up nearly half of the young man's face. It was the mark of a banished prince, doomed to chase the Avatar forever he had once told her. She wondered what Zuko had done to receive such a horrendous punishment but she found that it didn't matter. Nothing could've justified that. Her own father had never done so much as spank her or Sokka, even when they'd taken one of the boats out for a joyride and had promptly smashed it into the rest of the fleet.

"So…uh," Zuko said in effort to veer to subject elsewhere, "Where did you come into the picture, Toph? I think I saw you briefly in that old abandoned town but-"

"I got picked up from the Earth Rumble Six!"

"Figures," he mumbled, then barely audible added, "Somewhere in the world there's a big brute of a man that likes to play with dollies."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean!?"

Zuko jumped, surprised that she had heard him. Maybe in exchange for her sight all of her other senses had honed that much sharper.

Katara giggled at the exchange. Perhaps the gods had been playing a prank on the world to have placed such a macho warrior inside the body of a sweet-looking noble girl. "Is it just me or does Toph sound a lot like 'Tough'? Surely not the image those parents of yours would've wanted."

In response Toph gave an irritated puff to her overlong bangs.

"Is it short for something?"

"_No_," she huffed unconvincingly.

"I'll bet it is."

"Not!"

"After all the silly nicknames _you_ give _us_ and you can't-?"

"It's Tophalline! To-fay-lean!" barked the girl at once, knowing she'd never hear the end of it. "My fool of a mother gave it to me and I'll thank you to never use it in my presence lest one of your eyes goes and blacks itself!"

"All right, all right, no need to get snippy."

"Should probably get some shuteye while we can," said Zuko abruptly, looking out onto the dark sky, before the girls would get the idea to talk the whole night through. "I can-"

"I can take the first shift," Katara interrupted, stealing the words she knew he'd say out from under him.

"I'm only going under if you two promise not to kill each other," grumbled Toph as she settled down and crossed her legs, " 'Cuz I'm no maid. I'm not cleaning up afterwards, you hear?"

In humility that was still new to him, Zuko nodded his head but then, remembering that she was blind, answered yes.

Katara answered, "I'll be busy keeping the balloon on course anyway."

Assigned so by Katara, Zuko and Toph settled into different corners to get positioned as comfortably as could be in a little basket tossing along a hundred feet in the air to where ever the wind blew but just as he'd gotten situated and had shut his eyes Zuko felt something light patter over his chest and crawl ever higher.

He blinked a single eye open in annoyance.

"Get lost, _bitey_. I don't like you."

Innocent as a small child, Momo cocked his small head to a side and gurgled.

Still Zuko continued to protest to the small creature as if it could understand him. "I _said_ no. I – don't – _cuddle_," and the last word he spat as though it was a dirty curse and the girls almost choked to keep from getting caught giggling.

Momo seemed neither put off by Zuko's tone nor his avoidance to give any signs of welcome after their incident. The little animal curled up into the crook of the boy's shoulder and curled his tail round his neck, making Zuko's eyes slit and his lips to form a straight, chiseled line as though in silent prayer for the gods to strike him down where he sat.

The girls waited to see what would happen.

"Whatever," Zuko grumbled but he was neither angry nor unhappy, just tolerable of the furry scarf. His head thudded to the wall of the basket and he tried to let sleep take him as soon as it willed.

Katara continued on her duty. She found though as the other two fell asleep that little effort was needed to keep the bloated mass of air on track and it didn't have the friendliness of her usual transport. Four hours rolled by like four days and Katara woke Toph.

"I can't drive this thing, crazyhead," hissed Toph so that she wouldn't wake Zuko, "Unless you _want_ me to crash it into a mountain?"

"I know. I didn't forget."

"So what did you wake me up for? You know I'm basically just another piece of luggage when we're up here."

"Company, I guess. You don't have to stay up if you don't want."

"Meh, it's fine." And to get ready Toph crossed her legs and folded her arms behind her head. "What's on your mind?"

"It's been bothering me…ever since he _joined_," – Even as she said it, the word felt strange on her lips – "Ever since he joined our group. Everyone was behind me at first. I never thought the others would turn and accept him so fast…after all that he'd done to us."

Only did Katara feel comfortable in speaking it aloud when she saw Zuko snoring with his mouth wide open, Momo hanging off him, something his ego never would've permitted if he was awake.

"Who're we talking about again?" asked Toph, lazily picking at an ear. "You're being kinda vague here after us taking on seven new members. Is it Haru, The Duke, Chit Sang…?"

"_Toph_,"

"Of course I know you're talking about Zuko. He's the only one that's ever been on your mind lately."

"Has not!"

"Well you're certainly thinking about him all too often. That stink mood of yours that only he brings comes off you like you're a miniature sun. If I didn't know better I would've thought you had a crush on him."

"That's not funny!"

"Would you _ever_ get off this guy's back? Ever since he got here you're always finding ways to insult and degrade him and he takes all of it! _All_ of it! Who's to say you won't drive him off to live in solitude, after all he's got nowhere else to go!"

"You don't know him. You don't know what he's done."

"I know enough and I know that Sokka and Aang have the humility to offer a confused boy a second chance!"

"I did too and he threw it back in my face in the catacombs!"

"So be mad forever! Be this ugly person I don't even recognize anymore! Hold onto all this hate if it makes you feel better but don't try to push the same on us, Mother Turtleduck! We're not your chicks! We can think for ourselves!"

"After all we've been through you're going to take _his_ side!?"

"I'm not taking sides, Katara! Can't you see that!? Aang is the only one Zuko has ever been after and the two returned perfectly fine from the lands of the original firebenders. Why would Zuko do that if he was still loyal to the Fire Nation!?"

"Well-"

"There _is_ no reason! He could've led Aang into the hands of an entire fleet and this war would've been over! Zuko brought Suki and your father back at the risk of his own life! He's _trying_ to make up it to you! Does he have to half kill himself before you'll notice!?"

Katara looked away, surly, though the words seemed to have some effect.

"I know that he's hurt you, Katara," said Toph, calming down from her rant. "I really do think that he's changed though. He's been through a lot and he's had to witness and live through what his nation is putting the rest of the world through to realize that. And his temper…it's cooled off so much. You can't deny that."

Katara still refused to talk.

"You can go back to hating him in our down time, suit yourself, but I'm not going to stand for it on the battlefield. We can't have any hesitation on your part, none at all." Toph was point blank, no nonsense. "I need to know if you can trust Zuko and treat him like a teammate the same as me. If not, you can walk straight back to camp right now." She pointed a straight arm to their takeoff point to enforce that.

Several long moments the two sat the balloon with neither movement nor speech.

"I came here to keep an eye on him," said Katara finally and her words were grudging, not wanting to come out, "I suppose I can do this…trust my back to him. I wouldn't want to leave you with any less backup, Toph."

"Good to hear." Toph plopped back down to the basket's bottom. "Why don't you prove this newfound good will with Princess by switching shifts?"

In confusion, Katara looked to the time-telling device lent to them by the mechanic and it read that half of their flight had passed and it was Zuko's turn to take over. Before her nerves could stop her, Katara shook him awake.

"Wha-What!? Who's there!? What's happening!?"

"Your turn," Katara said simply, not trusting herself to say more of him after everything that he already had. She took Zuko's space when he got up and found that it was warm and she used the minutes before she fell asleep to think about what Toph had said.

It had only seemed like minutes when she was prodded at the shoulder.

Dangling at the edge of a cliff with waves crashing upon its jagged side was a fortress in the horizon that looked no bigger than a cherry.

"We're there," said Zuko to the girls as he made their descent.


	3. Chapter 3

It was a tiny box closed off to the world, the only light a tiny, dying flame from a lantern dangling from the wall by the stairs, the only sounds were the drips of precipitation leaking down from the ceiling and the scurrying of nozzle-nosed rats

It was a tiny box closed off to the world, the only light a tiny, dying flame from a lantern dangling from the wall by the stairs, the only sounds were the drips of precipitation leaking down from the ceiling and the scurrying of nozzle-nosed rats. Walls were made from brick, which were in various stages of decomposing from age.

It was the place that Ursa had found herself after the attack on the teahouse where she worked. She'd given herself up peacefully, not wanting harm to come to the kindly old owners that had taken her in.

_What would they have said had they known that the sweet waitress Lao Ma was actually the traitorous former Fire Lady?_ thought the woman wistfully to herself. _Probably would've made sure the door hit me on the way out._

She couldn't blame the old couple. It was the mindset in which they had been raised.

She knew the fate that awaited her the next time the guard's heavy footsteps reached the bolted door. She had eaten her last meal of runny oats which she couldn't coax any flavor from.

Ursa's end was near and yet her stance was straight and poised. She would be the lady she was raised to be.

From an inner pocket in her robes the woman withdrew a parchment. So yellow and crumpling was it from years of use that it wouldn't survive much longer…not that it mattered now. It was of course of her family and one of the few items she'd been able to grasp before her banishment. What she'd wanted to bring were her real children, Zuko and Azula, not just pictures. The husband she'd been forced to marry she'd brushed over with black ink to great satisfaction.

Her fingers brushed over their images of her son and daughter: Zuko's posture was stiff and he was still attempting a meek smile after holding still for so very long while Azula looked painfully bored and ready to move onto something else. Her younger self's hand touched over either of their shoulders while the ink-destroyed form of Ozai stood to a side, almost alone, like a red and black wall.

_They'll be teenagers now,_ and the thought brought Ursa a small smile where the rest of her had been drooping.

"Nice family there," came a hot breath at her shoulder and the woman stiffened.

"Pretty kiddies from a pretty lady," cackled another of the men she shared the dingy cell with and he took an unwelcome advance to stroke through a lock of her long hair. "How about a kiss before we all enter the next life?"

"Get away from me."

"No need for the attitude." The man gave a smile which revealed several missing teeth. "Just one little kiss?"

Ursa sat as she did staring forward, prim and proper, not gracing the man with reply. When he moved in however to take what she had not granted, Ursa pinched his lips together, hitting pressure points on his friend's arm when he tried to interfere. She used pressure points again and the two men lay on their backs and twitching as though dispatched instead by a burly Earth Kingdom wrestler

The Fire Lady had been bred for beauty and her recessive firebender genes. It didn't however mean that she couldn't defend herself.

Ursa looked up and, although her expression was passive, other prisoners backed away.

"Is it _so_ hard to get it right?" complained Zuko when he looked straight on into the face of himself, the scar opposite and with only a skullcap of hair. "How old is this wanted poster anyway?"

They were in the neighboring town in the marketplace at the bulletin board that lay in the exact center of the place. Toph had only ever had a wanted poster of her for pulling scams and Katara none at all even though they were in leagues with the Avatar. The girls could've strolled through the place with electric blue feather headdresses and they wouldn't have been recognized. Zuko however was another story.

"How did you blend in before?" asked Katara.

"Didn't. Uncle and I just kept our heads low and avoided villages as much as possible." He pulled his hood lower over his face as a few early risers passed. "Bet if that brother of yours was here he'd suggest I go hat shopping to distract from it."

"Ha! Probably!" agreed Toph and she smacked him a good one over the back in appreciation of what she thought was a joke. "I've got a leftover foundation sample from our spa treatment in Ba Sing Se that I've never used. You're welcome to-"

"Thanks but I'll pass. We're not staying here long."

Staying in one place, even if it was before a bulletin board, was never a good idea in a busy marketplace. Someone crashed into Toph's side. Had it not been for her always firm stance, the little girl would've been knocked to the ground.

"Watch it, brat!" yelled the man, throwing back a glare as he hurried on.

"_You_ watch it, bub! People here are so rude! Who's hungry?" she asked suddenly. "I'm hungry. Let's grab some eats." But even as she said those words Zuko was already back with fruit purchased from a traveling merchant whose wagon creaked past and disappeared into the crowd.

Zuko shifted the three fruits in his arms and he placed a fat, ripe pear in Toph's not expecting palm.

"Ooo, breakfast! Thanks, Princess."

"Sure," he said and he found that he was starting to like the gruff, little tomboy. He approached Katara more warily when he offered his second ware that was a pummelo. "Uh…you don't like papayas, right?"

Katara, ready to snap at him, blinked. "How'd you know that?"

"Listening at the campfire; the time your group treated yourselves to fruit cups after whipping the Rough Rhinos."

She recalled the time. It had been shortly after they'd added Toph, thereby evening the ranks.

"I wasn't eavesdropping," Zuko stammered at her continued silence of a few seconds.

"What a silly thing to eavesdrop about," she teased without too much meanness and she began pulling away the peels of the fruit. At the smell, Momo popped out of her handbag to investigate and was rewarded with a couple slices.

Toph had been relishing the chance to eat the pear almost larger than her little hand could hold. She'd not had such a fine specimen since she'd been at her family manor. She polished it up good with her sleeve, breathed on it and had been about to take a bite…

"Blast it!" she shrieked when the pear was blasted onto the dirt road by another rude passerby. Up ahead she earthbended a gopher hole and stood by in satisfaction as the man collided with the ground. "My pear…is it still alive?"

"You don't want to eat that thing now." Katara tried to mask the sound of her chewing to lessen Toph's upset.

"I'm not buying you another one," said Zuko sternly as he thrust the apple that was his own breakfast into her hands. He stormed off through the crowd in search of another fruit merchant; soon though Katara and Toph had no choice but to catch up to him with the sway of the crowd. Everyone was heading to the fortress for the day's anticipated event.

Half a pummelo and half an apple was placed into Zuko's palms. The girls couldn't have him going hungry.

"Eight traitors set to burn to a crisp," said a boy no older than sixteen in excitement to a group of friends. "I'm taking wagers over which of them is going to last the longest. Any takers?"

"That Earth Kingdom guy is built like an ox," said one with rat teeth. "I got him."

"Yeah but the wiry guy is a spiritualist tempered to be able to withstand pain and earthly desires," argued another. "It certainly won't be the woman. She'll go up like a torch once the first plume of flame-"

Zuko's face warped into a mask of rage and his hands glowed red to match, running bubbling blisters up and down his fruit, but Toph was already one step ahead of him and pounded out a shallow trench directly in the path of the group of boys. They dropped like stones, to the chagrin of those around them, and were left to wonder what had tripped them as the three moved on.

Katara, Toph and Zuko had to all link hands as to not accidentally separate with Toph of course in the middle. It was all they could do to keep that connection as the coarse crowd pulled them like an ocean tide into the fortress's stadium.

The flyer hadn't reached them in time to attempt a stealth mission.

Once they'd been filed into an unofficial row the three found they barely had enough room to raise an arm without hitting someone. They dropped hands. More people filed in behind as the Admiral on stage cleared his throat. "My brothers and sisters, today those who think enough of themselves to turn on the honorable Royal Family shall meet their demise!"

There was a rise of cheers that only the trio did not take part in.

"I have for your viewing pleasure eight such traitors," bellowed the Admiral and his great belly shook with him as he roused the crowd more and more in anticipation. "Bring them out!"

Eight prisoners in ratty clothing were filed out in chains onto the stage, each face set in deeper gloom than the last. Only one of them held a high chin, however certain creases throughout her delicate face gave her away.

Zuko's eyes went wide; even the lid of his scarred eye came near to a full retraction. Hearing she was alive was entirely different than seeing it himself. He wanted to go to his bound mother at once and rip the chains from her with his bare hands.

"We're moving out," Toph passed onto him in a whisper, "Just like we planned: me to the East corner, you to the West and Katara to the North. Don't harm the civilians. Break!"

The crowd looked on with anxious eyes and several cheers as the prisoners were each tied to stakes: the only fitting end to be given at the hands of their nation. Ursa gasped as the guard manhandling her thrust into her spine the long length of wood cut just for her. Her hands were tied and her midsection and then her feet were lifted above the ground. The grown man beside her was begging to be spared, that he had four young daughters waiting for him to come home. As much as she felt it for her fellow she didn't let him sway her to follow his example.

Ursa looked onto the crowd that was her own people, cheering and whistling. All this she had been sentenced to, all of her life that she'd known stripped in order to protect the so-called "lesser" of her two children.

She clenched her teeth to stave feeling sick when a firebender produced a fire-whip and cracked it in the air to the crowd's delight.

After a round of showing off, the bender reared his arm back to strike.

The stadium was drowned in a rush of elements: sections of the hard earth below growing tall into walls, separating the crowd from the soldiers and herding like cattle the civilians further and further away with great crunches as funnels of fire and cyclones of water fired without mercy upon the soldiers on the opposite side.

Everything had come down and was flashing by so fast that with her limited range of vision Ursa could discern little of what was happening with all of the elements save one colliding with each other under the command of their wielders. In the great diversion it had all brought she started to struggle with the bonds keeping her in place, trying to wriggle her small wrists from the rope at her back, send her pole crashing to the ground, anything she could manage. The other prisoners followed the example with little persuasion and there were no guards available to stop them.

Toph got the civilians out of the place in a mad rush but a single one in the remaining South corner had remained behind. She didn't understand it and still didn't quite when Katara yelled out in surprise: "Is that…? Is that a Kyoshi Warrior? Alone?"

"Can't be!" breathed Zuko, all he could say when he dodged an incoming swipe of flame.

"Is it Suki?" asked Toph of them and they did what they could to discern.

The young woman was garbed in the traditional garbs of the Avatar before Roku with heavy armored green cloth, gloves and boots that covered all that lay below her neck. Her face was painted white and her lips were dyed rose. What stole from the elegance of her image were two very out of place bobs of dark hair on the top of her head with pinned peach blossoms paired with a smile so wide she had trouble holding it there.

"Uhh…not Suki." That the warrior's headpiece was a simple gold square as opposed to the more elaborate one Suki wore as leader was evidence enough to back the claim.

"Pimaea!" the man that had begging for his daughters answered for them. "My dear niece, you've graduated from your lessons on Kyoshi Island! You've come to save me! Oh my sweet child!"

"Pimaea?" Katara reflected if she remembered a girl by the name on the island. Being an island, Kyoshi could not provide everything to maintain survival and so seafaring families were required to barter with the land. She didn't know everyone there by name; a couple handfuls of people could've easily gone under her radar on either of her visits there. The one prisoner recognized her at least.

"You here to help?" asked Zuko of her between trouncing enemies.

The painted girl whipped out her golden fan and bowed her head low. She seemed to not want to look at any of them head on, which could've been an understandable shyness in battle for a new graduate, her overdone smile a cover to mask her fear.

The three had no chance to inquire further as the bender meant to launch the festivities ducked under a blow meant for him from Katara and the first

flames burst to life at the base of each of the eight stakes.


	4. Chapter 4

Thank you for all the wonderful reviews

Thank you for all the wonderful reviews! They're all greatly appreciated!  I love writing Toph. This I think is going to be the best chapter yet, had the one fight scene brewing in my skull bucket for ages, so hold onto your seats and enjoy! – Arual-san

Katara had meant to douse the flames at the stakes as soon as they had begun but for several of the guards on the lookout decks having run to stairs to join with their comrades. She, Zuko, Toph and the Kyoshi Warrior Pimaea were outnumbered four to sixty, so it'd be fifteen each if the rookie could keep up. The length of water she had intended to use on the prisoners had to be pulled back to keep herself from getting blasted but as she pulled she was able to slice through the two stakes closest to her. She couldn't spare the men a nasty fall.

She turned back full attention to the enemy and none too soon as they all began to attack in trained synchronization. What she needed was to neutralize them to get them out of the way and she managed to whip two of the soldiers to the wall and freeze the water that had struck them in that same movement. They were pinned and couldn't be freed in one go without getting roasted.

One of the men had been hoping to nail her when he'd managed to penetrate her immediate space when she was focused elsewhere.

Her snapback to face him and catch him dead in the eye made him falter and in that instant Katara procured ice daggers between the gaps of her fingers and let them fly just as she'd seen the emotionless Goth girl do so many times.

She hadn't the experience to put any art into the man's frozen pose like Mai would have but it did the job.

As she fought Katara noticed that Momo had gotten out of her bag at some point and was doing what only a little lemur could to help, zooming by in the air and throwing dirt in guard's faces, spinning their helmets round so that they couldn't see.

Katara noticed the two men had managed to free themselves.

"Hey!" she called to them. "Come help us! There's a row of weapons over there and-!"

Neither of the men heard her plea. They scrambled for the exits, never to return.

"Useless!" She returned to fighting.

Katara had brought two canteens of it but she had to be conservative with her water when the firebenders had started to evaporate her whips into the air. She could naturally suck the moisture back into her palms but the effort would take concentration she hadn't the few seconds' peace to give.

"Behind you, Toph!" shouted out Zuko when a soldier pulled the dirty move of jumping from the roof.

Toph couldn't detect the man while he was in the air but fired a charging round of earth where Zuko had said. Only a moment's shock registered before the man crumpled to the ground unconscious. Like moving in rhythm to music only she could hear, Toph stomped the earth beneath her and soldiers toppled to the ground.

Beset at all sides, Zuko was unable to go to the aid of his mother as the flames at her feet devoured the wood. It made him a force to reckon with. The fire he had wasn't enough and so he leeched all that burned from the stake on his end.

"Get 'em, Pimmy!" cried the proud uncle to the Kyoshi Warrior using her acrobatic skills to kick and backhand her half, using force and her fan where the others used elements.

A soldier came in with a comet of fire and the bound man started but the girl arched her spine back as far as it would go on a normal non Ty Lee person and evaded the attack by inches. She snapped back and landed a blow to the man's gut.

Rather than chase after her, since Pimaea it seemed was automatically deemed weakest by the fortress by the fact that she hadn't yet bent any the earth of Kyoshi's nation to her will, the soldiers focused in on the bigger game when the girl slipped away from the group she'd been working on to make a beeline for the captives. Before her a man was wildly firing at Momo, who scrambled up and down his legs and when he could bit the man's kneecaps.

Pimaea slashed her fan to the rope of the spiritualist who'd been meditating in silence but was jolted from it at hitting the ground and she cut the binds from the man claiming to be her relative.

Pimaea was about to move on when the man seized her by the shoulders, eyes shut and smiling.

"Oh, Pimmy, I-!"

The girl gave a highly irritated huff of impatience that he was slowing her down in the midst of battle and she waved a fan to where the weapons of the fortress laid. If he wanted to give praise he could just as easily help out, that or get out of the way. All of this she did in only seconds so he could barely glimpse her before she was onto Ursa, pigtails bobbing, who was next in line.

Pimaea readied her fan but was intercepted by two angry firebenders.

Where Ursa was bound the first plumes of smoke had begun to rise and irritate her nostrils and she moved her head aside to breathe in the pure oxygen while she could. She couldn't dare to look below as the fire licked the tips of her shoes.

Zuko had had enough fighting off wave after wave of soldiers who had recognized him for the prince he was. Each of them had wanted the bounty for bringing him into his father's hands and most of them didn't know when to stay down. His element could not solidify like Katara's or be used as a blunt instrument like Toph's so he'd had to use time and precision to incapacitate his enemies into submission.

No more.

His feet barely skipped along the floor so fast did Zuko run one level up with benders in hot pursuit. He reached a corner, almost undershot it and clutched his side in reflex. He was nearing his mother and the wall directly behind her.

A blast of fire singed his heels. He spun now that their aim had improved and reinstated his attack. One went down and then two more dropped like flies but still they kept coming. He took down so many that he'd begun to sweat but he didn't stop and did it as quickly as possible.

So focused was Zuko on the soldiers before him that he didn't take in the ones below.

Two soldiers took time from fighting Toph to seize the opportunity that was Zuko's distraction and fired at him. Zuko felt the heat before he saw it and only just had time to put up a half-dome barrier of fire to keep the rest of his body from matching his bad eye but it wasn't enough to stave off the force of it.

He was blown clear off over the cliff.

It took Zuko a second to process it, the wind rushing by him as he rocketed head first straight towards the unforgiving surfaces below. He sent blasts of flames down but they did little to slow his speed. He was going much too fast.

His voice caught in his throat. He coughed it back.

"_Help!_"

"What's up, Princess?" asked Toph, the first to hear, as she pummeled a man who thought he could be within five feet of her. "Are the big, bad benders too much for-?"

"_Falling!_"

That got Toph's attention. She ran to where she heard Zuko's voice coming from and erected below her a single stair to reach the upper level. The benders below simply wouldn't leave her be so she next rolled a bunker of rock all around that was as a shell.

Fire pounded on her bunker from every direction but Toph knew it would hold long enough.

"Where are you!?" Toph called, nodding her head around sightlessly.

"_Here!_" Zuko shouted over the wind.

Toph stomped and from the cliffside a platform emerged.

"To the left! _The left!_"

Again Toph tried and again she failed to snag him. As he passed the second platform by Zuko still grasped his hands out to try to reach it though it was a good five feet away. He continued to fall.

After a third failed attempt Toph noticed something that made her brighten. "Hey, there's a whole bed of rocks right below you! I can just-!"

Zuko went paler than a fish's underbelly when the jagged black slate below, intimidating enough as was, stiffened straight up into a row of spikes for his landing.

"_Not those! Not those!_"

Only when he said so did Toph take the half-second to analyze the structure of the rocks selected. She put them down. She couldn't go about this the way in which she was accustomed and there was no time to go for Katara.

Toph grumbled in that she had been reduced to this but there was no other option.

"I'll have no sass from you this time."

A simple stomp would've made a reasonable division like rock, dirt or mud yield to her commands but Toph had to dance up a drumming tempo to tempt the sand that lay beneath the waves. A tan head surfaced and rose like a crude, twisting snake, not one of Toph's best creations.

Zuko couldn't move closer to it, he could only fall closer and closer to the rocks that would be his end and Toph worked to keep her crumpling, already ailing creation alive.

"Is it below you!?"

"Yeah!"

"Okay!"

Through the connection she felt in fragmented vibrations Toph made the wet sand into a funnel and hardened it. The makeshift landing strip wavered every second that it was kept aloft but Toph managed to keep it there as Zuko neared.

She could only hope it would hold under the pressure.

Zuko hit the strip. There was some resistance in the hardened earth but the sand shattered. Toph readied two more to slow the force he had picked up in his fall and was able to catch him safely. Pulling him back up was another obstacle.

Toph pulled and it was like pulling a rope that had been gnawed to the last strings in several places by rats. Several of those connecting strings broke with regularly and as she pulled him in she had to constantly re-forge her connection. For Zuko it wasn't much better. He had to be fast on his toes to predict Toph's next move. Luck was never his strong suit and he thought he would fall every time there was a jolt in the structure.

Red hail continued to pound Toph's bunker and she shouted in frustration for the benders to shut up.

"Almost there!" she promised.

Wet sand seeped out in chunks from the snake as she moved Zuko up and up to meet her. The two had a scare when it broke and Zuko dropped a few feet only to be picked up yet again.

Zuko exhaled in relief when he was level with the roof the building…he didn't know what to think when he was raised several feet higher than need be.

"Hey, you can stop now."

"What!?" called out the girl throughout the violent quaking of her bunker that was on its last reserves.

"I said you can-!"

A final blast of flame cracked the shell that was Toph's protection into a hundred tiny fragments and in the disruption it brought the sand Toph had been working gave a mighty jolt forward over the building, no longer with the solidity to keep him airborne.

Almost out of water, sensing it behind her, Katara whipped a hand back as her eyes remained locked forward.

"Thanks for the reserves, Zuko!" she said as she leeched the water from the sand above, too busy to care to see where it had come from, and her attack was given new strength. Their side was winning.

"What I'm here for!" he shot back in irritation as he started to fall for a second time. Toph hadn't the time to help him again and he didn't need it. Zuko fired a spurt of flames at the sand below him. Nothing happened so he summoned up from his core the hotter blue flames that Azula produced with ease, driving them up to a toasty 3110 degrees Fahrenheit.

The grainy sand that Toph hated solidified into clear, purified glass that cooled in contact with the air.

Zuko landed light as he could on the line of the fragile material and knelt low to pick up speed as he sped down its twists and turns like a slide. He came to a running landing and took out with one hit the first soldier he came into contact with.

He didn't take time to notice the work of art he'd unintentionally made. The flames were roaring now and the bases all swallowed up in the element's hunger; those unfortunate enough to still be bound winced as it moved to devour their legs. Zuko allowed it to progress no further. He brought all the fire to him and threw it away, melting the glass behind him.

He was at his mother's stake in the stroke of a second hand. He got her down from the awful structure and laid her on her back.

_The fire's gone!_ he chanted to himself. _It can't hurt her anymore! She's fine!_

Ursa's eyes were watering and she couldn't keep them open so hard were the coughs that made her buck from her chest. She was struggling just for air to breathe and Zuko recalled with a sinking feeling that smoke often killed more often than burns. He did what he could and laid her head on his lap to help her breathe better. He talked to her, told her to keep coughing it out as he shielded them from attack.

"It's okay! Just breathe! Breathe!"

Ursa coughed. Her coughs were tearing at her body and it pained Zuko to see.

An explosion spawned by a combination of earth and fire made the ground shake with the force of any natural earthquake. The girls all recovered quickly and continued like it hadn't happened but Zuko couldn't follow suit.

His mother lay still on his lap. No breath rose from her chest.

For a moment Zuko couldn't breathe, didn't think of it. She shook her, spoke to her, yelled at her and she didn't respond.

He twisted his upper half round in a wide circle, eyes searching throughout the flashing figures and winding elements, desperate.

"_Katara!_"

The cry caught in her ears and reverberated there like a cave's echo.

While her body kept pace to the fighting dance Katara was engaged her mind told her that it was the first time that Zuko had ever dared to call her by her name. Never had Katara heard Zuko call out in the way she did in that single uttered word.

The veins in his system could've been set aflame and produced a lesser result.

"_Katara, please!_"

I am so evil.  Sorry for another cliffie but that's how I roll. Updates soon! Plan to finish this fic before the start of the season finale.

- Arual-san


	5. Chapter 5

"Katara, please

Thanks for all your support everybody, especially Liooness who's reviewed every chapter! Gratitude cookies all around! This one's kind of a short chapter but it's the end of a segment and would've felt weird to me had I ended it further down the line. Enjoy! 

"_Katara, please!_"

For just one horrible second for which she was ashamed of Katara hesitated. From the whips she'd formally been using Katara formed a ring around her body and sent it crashing into everyone around her, freezing them in place where ever they fell. She ran to what remained of the stage and picked off another seasoned soldier who thought, like many, that he'd be the one to take her down.

A glance to the four people that still remained on stages showed that they were beyond help and so Katara moved on to where Zuko lay protecting his mother.

"Zuko, what-!?"

"She's not breathing!" he shouted at her and at his outburst Ursa's head bobbled on his lap. "She's not breathing! You have those healing hands, do something!"

Katara looked to him, instinctively a little jumpy at his tone, and then she looked to the Fire Lady. Turning blue around the edges were her lips as the rest of the color in her face was draining away like it was being sucked up through a straw. Knowing she had no time to waste, Katara whipped out her water and set to work and it was in the back of her mind that as she did so she was trusting Zuko to keep her shielded from attack.

Fireballs pummeled the barrier of the same element but Zuko kept it going strong. Neither of them was going to get a scratch as far as he was concerned.

Katara moved glowing hands inches over Ursa's chest – the source of her ailment – and pivoted them to get the best angle.

A crease on her forehead showed when Ursa wasn't responding.

"Katara," Zuko choked out and the girl was startled to see him holding back tears, "Katara, please, _please_ don't let her die. I-I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for everything I've done to you and your friends. I know an apology won't fix everything but – but-"

His words tapered off into nothing at the depths of his distress and he could look only despairingly at his mother's still form.

Katara stared at Zuko as her hands worked below. Had he thought that because of his relationship to her that she would only put half of the effort she possessed into the working, that she would brush her hands after failing and say 'That's that' without a care? Had she given Zuko reason to think any differently, that he had to resort to begging her to help him?

From glowing at the palms Katara's hands flashed so that a glowing circle the size of a dinner plate formed over Ursa's chest. Her eyes narrowed and to an onlooker she may've looked furious but in truth she was in deep concentration.

The Kyoshi Warrior had taken care of the last of her pursuers and without a word (she in fact hadn't spoken a word since she'd arrived) she took up the post of guarding Katara and Ursa in place of Zuko. A couple of times, when she could afford to, she looked back to check on them.

"Zuko, I…" said Katara softly, finding it hard to say. She removed her hands. "I'm sorry, there's nothing I-"

"Don't tell me that! You're a healer, you heal the sick! It's what you've been trained to-!"

"Her problem lies on the inside," continued Katara in the same strained voice. "She's breathed in too much smoke, even if I were to revive her she'd go straight back to coughing without rest. Her lungs aren't working, she-"

"There _has_ to do be something you can do!"

"Zuko…"

"No! _No!_" It was the news he dreaded to hear and his head dropped onto Ursa's forehead. "Mother!"

Where she knelt beside them Katara looked onto the hunched over form of her former enemy bearing his heart in misery, unable to keep tears at bay even in front of her. She had thought she'd wanted Zuko to feel the same pain that he'd given her since their first meeting, met him with one verbal dagger after another at the Western Temple with the conviction that it would never be enough. Now as Katara saw Zuko weeping and broken as he cradled his mother's body to him she realized that what she was seeing wasn't at all what she wanted.

"Move." She barely registered that her lips had moved.

"W-what?"

"I have an idea. Tilt her head back. Open her mouth."

Zuko did as he was instructed throughout the tears coursing down his cheeks, in lesser amounts from the damaged duct on his bad eye. He hadn't the nerve to question her at such a dire time.

"Okay," she said aloud, prepping herself. "Be gentle…gentle…" Katara pulled back her water and she sent it all streaming down Ursa's throat, not into her stomach but her damaged lungs. She couldn't see the exact effects but through the connection to it in her hands she made motions to swish the water and clean out the grime.

Ursa gave a wild spasm and Zuko had to hold her down.

"Gentle…gentle…" repeated Katara as she gauged the approximate amount of space within that she had to work with. She was careful not to cause any further damage by being too hasty but she couldn't afford to doddle. She had to make sure that she wasn't just drowning Zuko's mother where before she had been suffocating.

Zuko held tight to every buck and spasm that ran through his mother's body. He let Katara work without comment.

Finally, doing all that she could, Katara siphoned the water back up the way she had sent it in and it came up tainted grey. Katara took out what was pure of the water and replaced it over Ursa to heal and like Zuko she waited for any sign.

Ursa gave a weak cough. Her eyes opened blearily but took nothing in before they shut again.

"She's alive," Katara confirmed. "She's going to survive this."

Zuko didn't know if he wanted to laugh or cry when she said what she did and so made some sort of strangled noise that was between the two.

"You're going to have to get her out of here though. We're almost finished; once Toph and I have the chance we'll rendezvous with you at the balloon. Have it prepped and ready to go."

He had been about to answer but a scream from the Kyoshi Warrior interrupted him. Upon her a three-on-one plus a hidden fourth attack had been launched from which no one, not the greatest bender in the lands, could have evaded or countered. She fell, her side flaming.

Katara put it out. She forced the attackers to back away.

"On second thought," she said now that they had a second unconscious body, "I'll come with you."

"Toph's a tough little kid," said Zuko, still getting himself together, wiping his face. "She'll be running down that hill right behind us soon enough I'm sure. That lemur of yours and the warrior's uncle seem to be handling themselves well enough too."

Ursa was loaded onto Zuko's back, the smaller Pimaea onto Katara's, and the two sped away with all haste, vulnerable in that they could only stop and kick out their legs with their elements in the event of an attack.

Luckily Toph was having all too much fun now that she had the action she'd been so craving and was mocking the remaining soldiers into humiliated fury that they were getting their butts kicked by a blind twelve-year-old. The men wanted to stick it to her rather than pursue Zuko and Katara and so the two made a free bid to escape.

The two flashed past the streets of the neighboring village, silencing with glares anyone that dared look upon them through their windows as though daring them to attack. No one took them up on that bet after the danger they thought they'd been in at the fortress and so Zuko and Katara passed by without trouble all the way to the balloon. Zuko fired it up as Katara placed Ursa and Pimaea elbow to elbow in the basket but even then there was little room to maneuver. She put a healing hand over Pimaea's side. Kyoshi Warrior armor was tough and built for battle so Katara wasn't worried about the injury being anything life threatening.

She looked on ahead as Zuko did to the upcoming fortress.

"This is where we say goodbye." Toph waved in good show to all the soldiers that laid bruised and fallen in her wake. She grabbed the warrior's uncle as he passed and pounded up a plateau beneath them, making rise to meet the balloon as the few firebenders still in commission fired away.

Toph and the man hopped into the balloon and Momo flew in after them.

It was a short time into the flight when the warrior's uncle, Khan was his name, had taken to wiping the heavy makeup that covered the girl's face. She had been sweating over the burn to her side and the makeup couldn't have been helping.

"_Wooo!_ I feel _alive!_" cheered Toph, surging her arms upward in ecstasy. "Don't you, Sugar Queen? Don't you, Princess? Nothing like kicking firebender butt in the morning! Where's the Fire Lord? I'll take him on right now!"

Amped up was she like a normal kid free from school come springtime and Katara sighed happily in the way a mother or older sister would. Even Zuko made a tiny grin at Toph's energy. His mother lay breathing evenly, if weaker than should be. For once he had nothing to worry about.

The group took a well deserved breather after the strenuous fight.

Eyes blinked open when Khan spoke.

"This isn't my niece," he said and the man, upbeat from the get go, spoke solemnly. He pulled back the cloth thick with makeup and those with working eyes leaned in to see.

What they saw neither of them had been expecting and Katara even made a start away.

They had a new problem on their hands.


	6. Chapter 6

The three had been hoping that night to have made it back to Western Air Temple

The three had been hoping that night to have made it back to Western Air Temple. Instead they had to find a cave that they had to drive a platypus-bear from. It was only one night after all. The animal didn't have any small cubs that needed the shelter and it would have it back the next day.

Zuko stood sentry at his mother's bedside and would've done so the whole night through had Katara not admitted to him that he was distracting her during her healing sessions. Not only did she have to work on lungs she couldn't see and touch but Ursa had minor burns on her feet as well. Why wouldn't a stony-faced teenager with crossed arms be a distraction?

"I don't think she hit her head. Why are you healing that too?"

"If a person doesn't have oxygen for even a few minutes it affects brain synopses."

"Oh."

"Feel that?" said Katara in effort to ease his unease, placing Zuko's hand to the center of his mother's ribcage. The boy flushed at her touch. "When she inhales her lungs fill to almost full capacity with little trouble. She's just as tough as _you_ are."

To that Zuko merely shrugged. Since she was more or less giving him the boot from the designated sickbay he found something to do in the form of collecting food and firewood. Plenty had he learned about what plants to leave alone after his run from the Fire Nation with Uncle Iroh.

For once Katara let him go without it occurring to her that he could be sending secret smoke signals or the like to his nation.

"Don't keep us waiting," was all that she said.

The girl falsely known as Pimaea was still under and given sleeping herbs, which Katara nearly overdosed on in precaution to make sure she stayed that way during their trek there. If possible they'd have kept her that way all night with not for the negative effects it would've caused. Where she lay on the ground Toph had pulled the girl's arms and legs up to her knees below the rock surface like quicksand and sealed them there like cement. She'd have placed another bind around the girl's waist if not for the injury sustained there.

With Azula there were no second chances.

When she woke there was no startling or recoiling in pain like another girl her age might have done. She simply opened her eyes, took in with indifference the surroundings she had ended up in.

Toph was unaware until Azula decided to speak.

"I suppose I can assume this isn't a water tribe prison. It's not an igloo."

"The water tribes don't _have_ prisons," Toph shot back.

"So it's the little blind girl assigned to guard me," mocked the Fire Nation princess as though amused by the situation more than anything else. "Your name escapes me at the moment. Oh well, it's not like it's important."

"Where's the real Pimaea!?" demanded Toph of her.

"Pimaea, hmm? That reminds me, where are my clothes?"

She had been stripped of the Kyoshi Warrior uniform and lay only in the light white robes that were her undergarments.

Toph made a nodding gesture in the direction of the pile of green clothing. "We're returning them to the rightful owner."

"_I_ am the rightful owner now, you silly girl. The warriors were weak and from my victory I collected spoils."

"I'm not arguing over this! What did you do to Pimaea!? Is she lying in a ditch somewhere beaten and bruised beyond recognition? Did you weasel the information out of her to plan this attempt in exchange for her life? Huh?"

"Are you aware that that thing resting on your neck can be used for more than headbutting an enemy?"

"Answer the question!" It was bothering Toph that no matter the situation Azula could always seem to turn the tides in her favor. Toph wondered if it wasn't really herself imprisoned on the ground in her own element.

"Why go to the trouble of waiting around on the road for a Kyoshi Warrior to happen by? They're a rare breed nowadays." Her reference was of course to all of the warriors save Suki being locked away in an unknown prison. "Besides I already happen to possess three sets of my own. I only needed to exchange the leader's headband for one of a lackey."

"That man thought he knew you."

"Because I arranged it that way. No, he's not a mole; he was simply a transferred prisoner. You see, along with the spoils collected I came across this scroll of a portrait of the warriors all lined up in a row."

"And one of them in novice's robes."

"She learns. Yes, it seems one of the girls had to remain behind from a lack of grace, prowess or whatever else. The uncle hadn't seen her in six years I collected from sources. It was the perfect cover."

"The perfect cover," Toph repeated for herself.

"I just needed to act the role when in costume. Tell me brat, did you and the others ever suspect?"

"That you were _helping_ us?"

Azula's face soured at those words and she need not have hidden it in to whom she was talking.

"This is all an interesting story and all but you haven't answered the question of why. _Why_ are you doing this?"

"I should think that would be obvious."

Where she sat with the posture of a plank of wood Toph waited.

"_B-because I miss my mommy!_ I cry myself to sleep every night j-just like – just like Zuko!"

Toph crossed her arms, not amused, as Azula's unconvincing display of sobbing tapered off into a round of scathing laughter and she wondered if Katara or Zuko would have any objection to gagging the mouthy princess while they were forced to tolerate her company.

It was between breaks in her healing sessions, when Katara had gone back to the tried and true method of simply placing a cool cloth over Ursa's forehead to reduce its temperature, that Ursa woke and wake she did in the same way as her daughter before her.

A blurry image of a tan-skinned teenager came into focus.

"H-hello…who are you?"

"It's Katara." Where Katara had been heading off to get some well deserved rest she now knelt at the woman's side. "I mean you no harm. You were rescued and brought here from that fortress. Do you remember?"

"Not much I'm afraid."

Katara caught herself in a blush that she only knew Zuko's mother as the Fire Lady and a former one at that. Surely she had a name and Katara asked it of her. "Well then, Ursa, as your healer I'll tell you that you're progressing finely and as long as you don't overexert yourself you'll be back to full health in no time."

"Overexert?"

"Getting into brawls, anything like what you were just pulled out of, you know."

"Yes, I see." Ursa gave a small sigh. "You're awfully young to be caught up in such a frightful war, you know that, Katara? I suspect though that reserve troops on the rebel end may be running low. And healing…you're a waterbender, are you not?"

"I am," Katara nodded.

"Do you know who I am?"

"I do."

"Then are you an initiate member of the White Lotus Society? I've been meaning to get in contact with them."

"I don't know what that is," said Katara though she seemed to recall a certain incident after they had left the manor of Piandao that Sokka was passed a White Lotus tile from a Pai Sho board. She shook the thought off as an old swordmaster's eccentricities.

"If all that you say is true then I don't understand. Why did you and your friends rescue me?"

Katara didn't bother with splitting hairs at her choice of using the word "friend" to describe Zuko. She supposed if such a name had to be attached to him right now it would be something around the title of "non-enemy", possibly a promotion up from that depending on her mood.

"I was actually just along for the ride."

At the other side of the wall, eavesdropping since page one, Zuko gave a tremor when she made the nod to him and the less than pleasant start to their voyage. All through the ease of their talk to a person only just met Zuko longed for the courage to move from his position and hear the soft, gentle voice that belonged to only one person speak to him and only him.

He shifted his load so that an arm came free. He touched it to the dull red scar that mutilated his face and wondered if his mother would even recognize that half-face of a monster that scared small children as the one of the kindly boy she remembered.

Zuko wasn't sure he wanted to find out until it happened that Katara was right at his shoulder without him ever noticing that they had stopped talking. She said nothing but tugged at the wrist he held to his chest and the load of mushrooms, berries, herbs and roots he'd collected tumbled into the end of her blouse that she'd lifted into a cloth basket. Katara had taken from him his task and his excuse.

She left to the other enclosures of the cave, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

"Is someone there?" And Ursa had shifted in her bed into a sitting position.

Perhaps Ursa would prefer to see her daughter, who had remained untouched and pure as far as looks went? Perhaps it would be better for her to forget that she had ever had any children if she were to discover how very far Zuko had strayed from the honorable way in which she had tried to raise him only for him to turn to the darkest traits of the very man she had sacrificed her life to spare his from?

Perhaps he should just leave right now and spare them both.

"Hello?"

From the wall Zuko pulled himself up. He braced himself as he did it but he managed to move the single foot it took when his legs felt like lead weights and he stepped out into view.

"Hi, Mom."

Ursa couldn't even say his name aloud to herself so great was her surprise that as tucked away as she had tried to make herself over the years that it was he who had headed the mission to rescue her. Her mother-in-law, the spiteful beast of royalty that she was, would've snapped her jaw back into place with a rod though it had barely shifted from place and parted her lips.

She did what she could and beckoned him to her with the curl of a few fingers.

Hesitant was he in every step but Zuko came. He knelt at her side as Katara had done, though not with the assured confidence that came in her healing as she had possessed.

Ursa followed him with her eyes as he knelt and when they were level her hands reached out to him.

Zuko couldn't keep himself from flinching back at the gesture but it was a small flinch and not enough to breach any distance. Her hand first closed over the scorched flesh on his left cheek that marred his otherwise handsome face and he flinched again at her, at anyone touching his scar. Her eyes knit in some sadness that couldn't be stifled but her second hand went to his right cheek that was still soft. Ursa took either half of him in equal measure and though the years had changed him, produced a hardness in him that she did not recognize, she still knew that he was hers.

"Oh Zuko,"

Holding his face wasn't enough after five years. She pulled her son to her and held him there tight.

After a few seconds where he felt her nails all but digging into his back and the slight shakes from her body to match did Zuko move his hands to return the hug she gave. There were no words between them. There was no need.


	7. Chapter 7

Sorry for the delay everybody

Sorry for the delay everybody! Been busy now that it seems the sun's not forgotten us here in Minnesota after a cold, gloomy spring.  Thank you for all your wonderful reviews! Each of them is greatly appreciated and helps speed the story along faster!

Arual-san

As her long fingers wandered along his scar Zuko closed his eyes to the touch. The healer's hands that had treated and dressed the wound years ago had not been nearly so soothing. Ursa held back her upset for what he had suffered in her absence as she trailed over where his eyebrow would have been to where the scar ended at the back of his ear where more hair would never grow again.

"Your father did this to you." It wasn't a question. "He did this…after he promised me you would be safe."

"His promises don't mean much."

"Oh darling, I'm so sorry. I should've found some way to take you with me. Ozai only wanted you to mold you into the prince he thought you should be, because two was a safer number than one for heirs during a time of war. What with your poor cousin…"

"Don't worry." He opened his eyes to look at her, to convince her. "It doesn't even hurt anymore."

Ursa's gaze brushed over the inner circle of the scar where his eyelid was a darker red. "How well can you see out of that eye?"

"I…" Zuko paused, looking away so she couldn't gauge that question herself. He hadn't had to talk of the details in quite some time. "I can still see, was quick enough to shut my eyes when it happened. The vision's partial though, not as good as my other one. What I'm more concerned with is that the scar tissue doesn't thicken and seal it shut on me."

"Oh dear."

"I have a special medication for that," he assured, not wanting to upset her further. "Memorized the formula."

"You could ask that waterbender to help heal it for you. She seems like a sweet girl."

Zuko sighed. If only she knew. "I've asked too much of her already."

"How's your hearing?"

"I know it looks bad but the inner parts are all fine with the angle I was hit."

Torn was she between wanting to comfort her boy and hit her husband, despite that with her strength it would hardly faze him. "You know that there is nothing in this world you could have done to merit such a punishment? That your father is a monster for marking you like this?"

"Yes." Far be it for him to elaborate only how recently he had come to that conclusion.

"So you're working with the rebels now, I see. A traitor to the homeland just like me?"

"Pretty much, yeah." Had the person he used to be have heard those words he'd have blasted even himself to cinders. Now he took it much more lightly. "I've joined up with the Avatar and his friends."

"Have you really?" Ursa's head tilted a small bit in amusement. "I've only been able to gather scarce amounts of information in my attempts to maintain a low profile but I heard that the boy died in Ba Sing Se."

"Nah, same goofy kid he's always been." And as nervous as he had been to see her again Zuko found himself talking to his mother with ease just like the last time they'd been together feeding turtle-ducks at a pond when life hadn't been so complicated. When one would finish a story the other would pick another up and so they talked in contentment in filling the other in on their lives in the others' absence.

Katara had thought it was the first sign that the world was going to implode when she'd first seen Azula lying on the balloon basket with pom-pom pigtails in her hair. It was ten times as creepy as seeing Zuko writhing on the floor laughing could've ever been and Katara had taken them out immediately, chills running up her spine, overlooking the possibly that Azula might've woken and blasted her in the little space of the balloon.

She just wanted to get it over with but before Katara could step in to take over the next guard shift Toph was already there before her and pushing her out to an adjoining room of the cave.

"I know Azula must be a pain but-"

"You have _no_ idea," Toph grumbled, collapsing back into a wall. She nodded her head back to make sure they couldn't be overheard before she spoke again. "Katara, I think something about Azula is abnormal right now. She's been trying to cover it up and I could barely pick it up but…"

"Yeah?"

"Her breathing patterns are irregular and before you can ask _no_ it has nothing to do with her ability to lie. That's still foolproof." Toph didn't need to say aloud the impossibility that Azula was the slightest bit unnerved in her captivity. "I think there's some other stuff too but I can't be sure."

"She _did_ suffer a burn and a blow to head hard enough to knock her unconscious."

"Again this is only guesswork but I think it was the same back in our fight. Looking back, even if she had to conceal her firebending I don't think Azula's fighting was at peak performance. No one should've been able to come out of that one attack injury free but-"

"But Azula's not a normal person," Katara finished for her, knowing they'd both come to the same conclusion. "Thanks for the heads up. Dinner's ready so help yourself. Stay out of the southern most chamber though; I'd like to give the two some privacy."

Toph had been moving to leave but stopped at that last sentence. "Do mine ears deceive me?" She prodded at the lobes for show. "Are you being considerate of our dear Princess?"

"Don't look too much into it," Katara put out in a huff. "I know if it were _me_ and _my_ mom together again _I_ wouldn't want anyone nosing around."

In mock-delight Toph clapped her hands. "Queenie's got the sugar back into her system!"

"Oh stuff it, Tophalline!" She gave Toph a push but instead of losing her balance Toph swayed back from the force of it and used the momentum to come crashing back into Katara even harder.

The girls shared a laugh.

With a curl of her hand Toph gestured Katara to her and said in low, evil tones, "_You_ used my full name. Kindly kneel down so I can give you that black eye I promised."

"Yeah, maybe later," said Katara, shaking her head and using that same movement to get the laughter out of her system. It would only serve to make things ahead more difficult. "Can you cut the pieces up on Ursa's share of food? Her throat is still mending."

"Got it."

As Toph walked down the tunnels with the solid, untouchable gait of any earthbender Katara followed her in gaze only and she wished that the upcoming conversation that she couldn't avoid could only be as pleasant but alas, in a moment of weakness opened only very briefly, Azula's identity had been revealed against her will and the great pride she held compromised somewhat in being held prisoner. Had they dumped her back into the fortress as was a third traitor would have been named from the royal family, still Azula had given no sign of appreciating the thought.

It didn't matter who the target was, Azula would take any one of them.

"Water Tribe Peasant A," Azula drawled, glaring at the stalactites above as Katara entered. "What, B isn't here too?"

Katara wasn't going to waste the breath in reminding Azula of their names, which she surely knew by now. She had a job to do and she was going to do it, insults or not. Only when Katara knelt at the other girl's side did Azula grace her with eye contact, deep and piercing.

"_Get_ away. _Far_ away."

"Nothing would please me more," Katara bit back, not intimidated by how very dangerous Azula looked at that moment, as though attempting to kill her through a glare. "You're injured." She collected up the water from her canteen. "All I'm going to do is-"

"I barely got grazed, fool! This is _nothing!_"

"It won't be nothing if I leave it alone and it gets infected!" Katara countered back. "The tissue will die and you'll have a big, gaping hole in your side, not to mention the pain-!"

"I need no filthy, water rat to heal me! The palace healers will treat me!"

"As small as this injury is, if you allow it to deteriorate in that journey time it could very well take your life!" So self assured was Azula of herself that Katara doubted that she had bothered to pack along a first-aid kit with her mode of transportation.

"Then get it over with!" barked Azula with ferocity, lunging up what little she could from Toph's entrapment, wanting badly to take a chunk out of the other girl, "If it'll get you out of my sight sooner than later!"

Knowing they would only hinder her, Katara heaved out the bad feelings she knew she would get from this session. She looked to her area of work and not to whom the face it was attached. "I'm going to lift the bottom of your blouse," she said, filling Azula in on every detail before she carried them out. "I'll lift it up to only your second rib so I can see the burn clearly. To get the most out of this session you'll have to remain still."

The princess gave a small grunt of discontent and moved her face the other way, the only distance she could put between them.

For a few minutes Azula laid in silence as Katara worked and she was not open as her brother to let her expression betray that the healing contact was far more soothing and fast-working than any treatment she'd have received back home.

Azula rolled her eyes low to see that the injury was almost a third smaller and more pink than red and Katara continued to work. "_You're_ the reason the Avatar's still alive, aren't you?" The way she said it Azula probably wished she'd have struck them both with the same bolt.

Katara didn't reply and she need not have. The answer was written in plain text on her face.

"I can acknowledge that such a feat is impressive," Azula continued in Katara's silence. "Shame to see such a talent go to waste. Why don't you become one of my servants? A healer?"

"_Not_ interested," said Katara in a hard tone, focused only on shrinking the wound.

"You and I both know you're battling a losing war," Azula goaded further. "The Avatar himself won't be spared of course but I suppose I could find other duties for your little friends in good will. _Don't_ think that this offer will still stand once we've beaten you down a third time."

"I would rather rot in prison. So would they."

"You assume I would sentence so lenient a punishment?"

"I would _also_ rather die."

"Defiant to the last breath, are we? We'll see if the same holds true later when-" But Azula stopped right there when a tiny spasm coursed through her chest and hide it she couldn't from Katara.

"What was that?" asked Katara, putting the session on hold.

"_Nothing!_" Where she had cooled Azula went straight back to boiling.

Katara ignored the claim she knew to be false. She sent her water back into its pouch and set a hand down over an uninjured section of her ribs despite Azula's demands to not touch her. With her healing senses she moved that hand to just below the left half of Azula's collarbone.

She waited and she felt it again.

"Was that…was that a heart murmur?" gasped Katara in that in those two seconds Azula's heart, if it wasn't shriveled black to begin with, had stopped beating. Her eyes wandered back to the wound and what she thought had been flesh around it red from irritation was more widespread than it ought to have been. She pulled the blouse on both ends to Azula's ribs and found a red and blistering rash wrapping round her stomach and probably the rest of her body.

No burn could take such drastic effects. No one could be allergic to their native element.

"You're ill." It was an understatement.

"Not ill enough to lose a fight to the likes of you! Let me out of here and we'll see!"

"What happened? What is this?" She'd not seen such a disease before.

"As if I would tell you!" Azula spat at her despite that Katara unthinkingly flicked it from her path. "You need only know that it's in recession! There is no water healing required!"

Katara's hands wandered over the area in worry over the angry red flesh with yellowish blisters the size of her fingernails that bubbled at the surface.

"_Don't touch it!_"

"I wasn't going to!" Katara shouted back and in the recent enlightenment she couldn't hold back the question anymore. "_What_ are you doing here, Azula!? _Why_ are you here when you're this sick!?"

"You think I'm here to rescue my dear mother, same as the blind girl," said Azula as though taking pity for their ignorance to so readily believe that she was not as bad as she portrayed herself. "The woman did all she could to hold me back, was always disciplining me without end. Father was much too impersonal for my tastes, merely ordering her death should she be caught."

Katara listened and she didn't like the route it was going.

"I came here to kill her myself," hissed Azula, taking it in with relish Katara's look of stunned disbelief. "I figured your little party might have joined in on the festivities so all the more reason to-"

Katara didn't allow Azula to finish that sentence, nor did she care that she was ill. She slapped Azula across the face as hard as she could.

Where her head fell Azula didn't move and a bright pink handprint blared against her cheek. "Oh dear me, did I hit a sore spot there? _Ever_ so sorry."

With righteous anger that she fronted to hide her great hurt Katara reared back her hand to make Azula's other cheek match. She forced herself to calm down, as hard as it was, and slowly lowered it to her side.

She finished the healing. She made Toph take over an hour too soon.


	8. Chapter 8

"She has a rash

Writing up a storm over here! Here you go, fresh off the press. Up to 1900 hits! Wooo! So giving a call out here to all you readers out there – I want at least five new people that haven't reviewed yet to do so before I upload the next and possibly final chapter. That's not asking very much. Just five. There're plenty of you out there and you don't want to miss this ending. Thanks for all your support and if anyone knows how to get the site to stop repeating that first bloody line please send me an email!

Arual-san

"She has a rash?" Zuko repeated, taking in the information. "Blisters?"

"And her heart momentarily stops beating at times," Katara continued to the two former members of Fire Nation royalty. She'd wanted to give them more time to connect but she felt that the information was urgent. "Does any of this sound familiar?"

Ursa gave a grim nod. "With our position of power such things are kept from breaching palace walls and so our immune systems are weaker from never overcoming these illnesses. What you described is common ailment caught by children in the villages of our nation. That Azula has become afflicted in her adolescence is a more serious matter."

"Is it contagious?" asked the two teens at once, surprising the other.

"Only within the first two days of contacting the virus," she said to them. "I doubt that anyone in this cave has caught it before, myself included, but no matter, we won't be catching it this day."

Katara gave a great exhale. Zuko kept himself from doing the same and thus causing another awkward moment.

"If you only realized that Azula had this rash upon lifting her blouse than the illness is on its way out," said Ursa, confirming what Azula had said previously. "Else wise it would have left no part of her untouched."

Katara couldn't help but worry, no matter the identity of the victim. It was in her nature. Zuko struggled with himself over the matter, unsure of what to feel. His mother misinterpreted this and assured him his sister would be fine.

"Are we going to be able to leave her here safely?" asked Katara. It had been the plan for Toph to start small fissures through Azula's stone restraints. She would've been able to free herself after several hours, by which time they'd have been long gone in the balloon with no trail to follow. "We don't have to drop her off at the front gates of the palace, do we?"

"_Leave_ her?" repeated Ursa in surprise. "But she's here with you and she helped rescue me, I thought-"

"Azula is an enemy," Zuko told her point blank, despite the disapproving look it brought from Katara. Any denial of the subject would've made things more difficult in the long run. "Her loyalty is to the Fire Nation and its lord."

"But then…I don't understand. Why did she-?"

A look passed between Katara and the prince.

"I haven't been able to get a straight answer out of her and I probably won't be able." Katara neglected to specify the exact reason given to her from Azula to either of them. After what he'd gone through to rescue her, the torment he'd suffered when he thought she was lost, Zuko might very well have breathed fire on hearing and taken up guard-duty over his mother for the next week. Zuko knew the she-devil his sister was but Ursa no longer knew her daughter and the news to her could be crushing.

"Look, dinner," said Zuko, changing the subject and thrusting out a bowl of stir-fried vegetables.

"Magically appeared did it, Zuko?" asked his mother with the smallest bit of teasing in her voice. She accepted the bowl from him and took in the smell wafting off with a content sigh. "I'm sure this will taste heavenly after prison food. Thank you, Katara."

Katara wished she could take credit. "Actually Khan made it. He was another prisoner from Kyoshi Island, if you've heard of it. There were these spices he put together that I never thought would blend well but they _did_."

"Like how rosemary tastes excellent with a dash of fennel?" Ursa added in with good measure.

"Yeah!" said Katara in delight. No one in her group was ever particularly interested in flavor variances; Toph and the boys just gulped down in a single swallow whatever she made after wearing themselves out in training sessions. "Or how you can add a handful of walnuts to jazz up a boring salad, mandarin oranges too. Have you ever-?"

"As _interesting_ as this is," Zuko cut in, not at all interested, getting in a word before the women launched into a full blown discussion, "I'm going to go relieve Toph of guard duty in case anyone needs me."

"I'll just cook you plain white rice every day and night until the comet comes if _that's_ how you feel, buster," teased Katara and how she said it she might've been teasing Sokka.

A pair of fingers rose to Ursa's lips as she stifled a chuckle.

"Food's food so go ahead." Zuko was never good at comeback lines, usually preferring silence or sulking, but since she was having fun and only funny when she wasn't trying to be Katara didn't let it stop there.

"The benders in the swamps eat giant grilled bugs. Maybe I could exchange recipes."

"Ugh," he recoiled in disgust over the thought of snapping over exoskeletons to suck out the gooey liquids inside. "By all means then," he said, waving for them to continue the conversation as he left. He didn't overly care about feminine things such as cooking recipes and such. It reminded him of his Uncle's obsession with a fine cup of tea and how Zuko was both looking forward to and dreading to see him again since the incident that pulled them apart in Ba Sing Se.

_He was so disappointed with me,_ Zuko thought back to how his uncle had refused to talk or even look at him when he'd thought that a chance at returning home after so many years was in his grasp. It had made him so angry, the one ear that was ever present turned away, so much more than any setbacks had done with the Avatar. _Be safe, Uncle…where ever you are._

With any hope Iroh would have taken Zuko's accepting of Avatar Roku's headpiece as a favorable sign. With any hope Zuko wouldn't be treated like an enemy by his surrogate father should they meet again. He hoped his word of where his alliances stood wouldn't require the Avatar's backup.

He could fight his sister but he could never bring himself to fight his uncle.

"And now it's Zuzu's turn," taunted Azula her older brother as soon as he stepped into her chambers. "What's this? No more waterfalls?"

For so long Zuko had taken her bullying and abuse but it didn't touch him this time in that she was addressing the mother they somehow shared. He wasn't ashamed for his emotion and he refused to let her get under his skin and make him think any differently.

He set an arm to Toph's shoulder. "Go get some rest."

"_Gladly_. I'm still all for the gag."

"Not necessary." He didn't want to imagine the horrible things Azula would do in payback next they met for such a humiliation.

"Oh _please_," Toph set an arm akimbo at that. "I know _you_ of all people must want to shut her up for once after putting up with that knife-tongue for so long. I am _so_ glad I'm an only child."

"Good night Toph."

"Yeah, yeah, night Zuko, just don't come in the night waking me up for company. I think I deserve a full eight hours sleep after the shenanigans you and Katara put out the last two nights."

"You do. Maybe you'll get back to that pleasant dream of yours?"

In a farewell until the sun rose Toph lifted her hand high and flicked a few fingers as she walked away and then it was just brother and sister alone for the next four hours. As it was, Azula wasted no time in telling Zuko that he was getting as soft as cheese.

"You're such an embarrassing weakling," snapped the princess to get a rise out of him now that he'd ignored her twice. "If any good were to come of it I suppose you made _me_ look even better…not that I needed it."

"Would you like your ration for tonight?" With a bowl in hand that could've been an oversized tea cup Zuko sat with almost the mirror image composure of his uncle, composed and without a trace of hostility.

"Don't you try to veer the conversation when I'm talking to you!"

"Katara was right," said Zuko between bites of his vegetables, only telling it as he saw it, "That Khan guy is a pretty good cook. I wouldn't mind having a second helping of this."

"If you're trying to develop a sense of humor you're failing miserably," Azula growled, throwing him one of her signature glares.

Meanwhile Zuko was scraping with chopsticks the bottom of tiniest slices of peapods and such and he tipped the bowl to suck down the spicy brown broth. He set the bowl aside and picked up the second one with an eager set of sticks.

Carnal needs won over for no longer a second and Azula's lips pursed.

Zuko caught it and paused. "Did you want this?"

"You won't have me begging, Zuko. I can last days without food."

"We can't release you yet, not even a single arm. I don't mind-"

"You are _not _feeding me like an infant, you pathetic excuse for a prince! Miserable, lizard-faced embodiment of shame and failure, I'll have your head and mount it on my wall at the end of this war if you so much as try!"

"Suit yourself." Zuko started on the portion meant for Azula since she didn't seem to want it and ate every bite to Azula's expertly concealed anger. He set the second bowl in the first and lay back contently against the wall with a full stomach.

The two remained in silence for several minutes and Zuko even mostly shut his eyes to slits but so that he could still see her.

"With all these changes, getting so lovey-dovey with your new gang, I wonder if you still remember Mai."

That woke Zuko from his half sleep. "What happened? What did you do to her?"

"Wouldn't _you_ like to know?" And even bound in rock and imprisoned in an unknown cave in the hands of her enemies Azula smiled at the advantage she had seized, despite how small.

Zuko only had to wait for her to continue after she'd drank in her fill of the hard cast of worry set over his face.

"She and Ty Lee aren't in the Boiling Rock of course, not after its flawed escape record. I sent them somewhere else where those abilities of theirs will have no effect. Only a firebender can gain access in or out."

"Ty Lee too?" He was surprised no little amount. The girl had openly idolized her princess.

"It would seem that I'm a lone wolf in the end in any case," continued Azula carelessly without a thought it seemed of her two comrades rotting in prison far away. "I needed them only to distract the rest of the group as I pursued the true prize. I'll have legions of soldiers for that purpose for the next failed invasion attempt you're saving up for."

"They were your friends!" Zuko argued with her passionately, bearing a fist. "_Our_ friends! We all grew up together!"

"And now they'll grow old and gray behind bars," she answered coldly. "Don't be so melodramatic, Zuko, half of your face is still acceptable, you can find yourself another girlfriend."

"Mai and Ty Lee aren't things! They can't just be replaced!"

"That's funny. I believe I've already done just that."

"I'm going to find them, just you wait, I'm going to break them out! Neither will ever be yours to command again! I don't care if they join me along with the Avatar, go into hiding or never speak to me again, I'm still doing it!"

"So go ahead. We have the vast majority of your troops in jail and I doubt an entire army could have fit on the bison in their escape. How many rebels do you have exactly? Six? Eight? Will two more make a difference?"

"There will _always_ be people to fight!"

"And to lose," finished Azula for him cruelly. "It's this attitude of yours, this naivety that has cost you the position of next Fire Lord. Ironic how _again_ the second born succeeds the first."

"I'll have it back when the Avatar defeats our father," he countered, though not nearly as after it as she. "Things will go back to how they were before that snake Sozin seized control of the throne, I'll make sure of it."

"Change is a tricky thing, you know. You could be mutinied upon by the very nation you hope to "_save_"."

"Even if it has been one hundred years that our world has been at war," said Zuko, keeping his head held high to hold her gaze, "Change is a part of all things. Our nation was once in balance with the other three no more or less. It _will_ be again."

Morning dawned and when the first rays of light seeped in through the cave and onto her eyes Katara groaned in annoyance that she had to watch the sun rise instead of being snug in her sleeping bag like the others. Even Azula had gotten a restful sleep where she had not.

The time-telling device read that she had an hour to go – the extra hour for ending her last shift early.

"You look worn out, dear." Ursa it seemed was an early riser unlike everyone else. She had recovered in record time and her long, layered red robes bunched at her feet as she knelt beside the girl. "Get some shuteye, won't you?" Her own sleeping bag Ursa kindly wrapped around Katara's shoulders and the girl gave a wordless mumble of comfort at the gesture. "I couldn't sleep a minute more."

"Thanks," breathed Katara softly, her body already settling into stupor.

"It's the least I can do after all you've done for me."

Katara looked past her to where the twin broadswords that were Zuko's non-bending weapons laid ready for use. She looked back to Ursa through tired eyes. "Are you going to be all right alone? Do you know how to defend yourself?"

"Not to offend but I _have_ evaded the Fire Nation for five years, longer than you I'm sure."

"Defense is a very different thing from blending in."

"Don't worry," assured the former Fire Lady and she stroked a hand over the thick brown hair of the girl she barely knew, already taking her in with fondness. As sleepy as she was, Katara gave another of the same mumble, some far off part of her still amazed at the kindness of Zuko's mother when she took into account the rest of his immediate family.

Katara's head nodded to a side and seconds later she was asleep.

As she looked upon the girl who had done so much without expecting anything in return Ursa smiled. She looked to the other girl in the chamber that was her daughter and her smile faded into a straight line.

From her long, billowing sleeves, taken from the toolbox of the balloon, a hand unearthed with a pick and mallet.


	9. Chapter 9

Thanks for the great reviews RueBroadway, Liooness, RazzleDazzle, FireChild, mT, Spicycute and Avatars Airis and Kiba

Thanks for the great reviews RueBroadway, Liooness, RazzleDazzle, FireChildSlytherin, mT, Spicycute and Avatars Airis and Kiba! Very much appreciated! I think I should be able to finish the story up one more chapter after this. 10 is a good number.

Azula's gold eyes opened, the rest of her still as the stone she was encased in, when she felt a light weight touch down at her side. Her eyes shifted and she saw her mother leaning there over her with a sharp metal pick.

The princess put out a mask of disinterest. She knew well that her mother may've been an Air Nomad in a past life so great was her respect for all creatures. The thought of her being in danger didn't once cross Azula's mind even as she was more or less helpless – an alien state to her. She was almost insulted when Ursa signaled her to be quiet, as if that much wasn't obvious.

Three incisions were made into each place of the earth above where Azula's limbs disappeared into the ground.

Now that her restraints weren't solid and sealed in every inch so that she hadn't even been able to twitch a finger Azula could now pour out her firebending with result. Flames hissed through the cracks, spreading them further until she could move her limbs in underground bubbles.

First she pulled out one of her arms. The other three limbs followed and she was free.

"Ah," Azula breathed with great delight, "Feels good."

With a wicked grin as she glanced to where Katara lay sleeping, defenses down, Azula flexed her digits from one to five. When she flexed a second time tiny sprouts of blue flame collected on each of the tips. She did the same with her other hand and flicked each of the flames away so that they all gathered in a straight line, making a beeline for the other girl.

"Azula?" gasped Ursa from behind. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like?" she answered with another question.

The flames drifted along the air like tiny ghosts holding hands and Katara didn't even stir as they approached her. They wound around her and the first flame linked with the last so that a circle of flame twirled around her head. "That necklace you always wear is _so_ outdated," whispered Azula, enjoying herself, to the unaware Katara. "Let me gift you with a new one."

She compacted the circle so that it was only six inches from the girl's neck and still it spun rapidly.

"_Azula_…"

Still Azula continued to wind the circle of flame around her enemy's neck closer and closer and as she did she wondered how close she could get before the water tribe girl awoke from the heat and fear took over from the guillotine necklace closing in.

Azula chin bowed and her eyes narrowed in cruel satisfaction.

"Please _stop_…"

With a lazy flick of her hand the flames Azula had made dispersed into the air and Ursa allowed herself to breathe.

"Only having some fun, Mother," shrugged Azula as though she had not just fancied killing someone in their sleep. "So very rare is it for me to come upon a worthy adversary such as the water peasant here. It would be a waste to dispose of her in such a way."

"That was _not_ funny," said Ursa in an unforgiving tone, "Not in the slightest."

"Not for the first time our opinions differ." Azula adverted her gaze from her potential victim to fix it on her mother. "Have at it then. You couldn't have freed me without a reason."

"You know my reason."

"I suppose I do."

"_Suki_," Katara moaned, shifting irritably where she sat, groggy eyes peeking open, "It's too early, go back to-" But as soon as the fuzzy image she saw shifted into focus her eyes bat open the rest of the way, going from dull blue to a razor sharp edge.

Azula was ready, ready to trounce any who dared keep her prisoner.

"Ursa, get _down!_" Katara ordered at once, jumping to her feet. "_Toph! Zuko! _Get in here_ now!_"

Seeing Azula on the loose was a more effective tool to snap Katara into full awareness than any earthquake alarm-clock Toph could produce and she didn't just draw up the water from her own canteen but drew up any and all water that she could sense in the cave – precipitation from the ceilings, random weeds that had managed to grow and of course the canteens from the others – and sent it all rushing to Azula in a heavy tide.

The onrushing water was coming in too fast and Azula could neither duck nor jump over it. With a grin she lifted up a wall of fire the same length and width as her body. A door evaporated in the water and she didn't have to move to remain untouched.

The water crashed into the cave wall but Katara gathered it up again before it could even hit the floor.

"_My_ turn," hissed Azula in the seconds-long gap it took for Katara to launch another attack.

Azula sent wave after wave of blue fireballs at Katara, not letting up for a second, making her jump, crouch and even having to just drop gracelessly to the ground to avoid a low hit.

While she was down Katara erected a shapeless blob of water to absorb the attacks until Azula put more force into the blows and finger-sized holes were erected, only to close seconds later. It was all Katara could do to keep up her defense. Azula had her right where she wanted her and wasn't going to drop that advantage.

With a great leap forward Azula prepared her strongest attack but with a misplaced gasp she nearly tripped.

The foot she had grounded lay trapped in a manacle of rock and in a flash of quick thinking Azula struggled to balance herself to keep her other foot aloft. Nearby Toph waited for the other foot to fall but it didn't. She sent pincers of earth up to try and grab it where ever it was but Azula kicked each of them down. In the diversion it brought Katara was able to trap the foot Toph couldn't catch with her water, which no amount of kicking and thrashing could free. Focused on keeping her trapped, Katara had become a slowed target. Azula reared back an arm to finish her in one blast but Zuko rushed up from behind and locked her arms at her back. Her offensive relied on bending and stealth and in that her brother was physically stronger than she Azula could not break free. Not taking any chances, Zuko additionally absorbed into him the heat pooling at her palms before she could pull anything.

Azula was caught.

"Three on one," she scowled at them all. "I hope you're all proud of yourselves!"

"How did you get out!?"

"My dear mother."

"Liar!" growled Zuko at her ear. "She would _never_-!"

"I would and I did," said Ursa, the first she'd spoken since the fight had begun, and in her words there was no remorse. "It was _you_ three who initiated this attack without provocation. She has done nothing!"

"She would've had she the time!" Toph kept an iron grip on Azula's foot. "_How_ could you have let her go!? You don't know what she's capable of!"

"I do not require any of you here," Ursa continued. "Leave us."

"No way!" Katara protested vehemently. "Azula said she was going to kill you!"

"You _what!?_" Zuko's growl to Azula was low and dangerous and he tightened his grip over her enough for it to hurt. She had crossed a line, so much more than the other atrocities she had committed against him.

"I am your elder and you _will_ respect my wishes," Ursa persisted nonetheless and her hard tone allowed no room for negotiation. "As you know well, Katara, my mind has not been addled from my near execution therefore you cannot use that as an excuse to seize control. You _will_ release her and you _will_ leave this cave. I order it."

"I am_ not_ letting her hurt you!" Zuko fired back, furious not at her but at the order she had given.

"Has your respect for me dwindled _this_ low, Zuko?" questioned Ursa of him and she was not above using a guilt trip on her son if nothing else would work. "I gave you a direct order to leave and yet you remain. Do my wishes mean nothing to you?"

"Of course not!" he argued, hurt that she would say such a thing.

"Then leave! You have no right to make this decision for me! Azula is my child just the same as you!"

A growl rumbled deep in the boy's chest and he felt torn between two sides.

"If you do _anything_ to her," growled Zuko like a predator to Azula, "_Anything_-"

"I'll consider myself a charred black spot on the ground," said Azula as though bored by the whole affair. "You've made that _very_ clear, Zuzu. Run along now with your little friends. You're not wanted here."

Zuko released her with an unfriendly shove and with much hesitation Katara and Toph each recalled their elements. It was quite a strange thing for them to see Azula only standing in place in their presence, not making a single move to attack them. Then again she might not have been interested in an unnecessary fight in that the Fire Nation's greatest threat wasn't currently present.

Zuko's gaze was not for Azula as was the girls'. He looked to his mother, brimming with worry.

"I'll be fine," Ursa assured, her voice again going gentle only for him. "I'll call for you if I need you."

The subtle look of mean-spirited triumph that Azula shot at Zuko was almost enough for him to forget all else and charge her. With a huff he stormed for the exit and the girls gave him a wide berth as they followed after. Ursa watched them go while Azula merely followed them with her ears in the case of a sneak attack.

When all signs were gone the two turned back to the other and the closest they stood was a good nine feet apart.

"So you managed to survive, did you?"

The mother was disapproving. "Hardly endearing words after a five year separation, Azula."


	10. Chapter 10

"So you managed to survive, did you

"So you managed to survive, did you?"

The mother was disapproving. "Hardly endearing words after a five year separation, Azula."

Azula shrugged. "What can I say? You sent the sentimental one away."

No longer could Ursa discipline her like days past when Azula had shown the first signs of a developing sadist when she had lit her dolls on fire and had pulled the wings off insects just to watch them wriggle helplessly on their backs. The wickedest traits the ten year old possessed had been encouraged and honed by her father into a blade with a wicked point and the result was standing before in her in teenage form. She would've killed Zuko, the failure deemed unfit to rule by divine right, just as Ozai would have done and do it without remorse. That Ursa somehow knew without asking.

But Zuko had changed too. He wasn't the unsure boy always at her side like he had been. He'd become independent and less susceptible to Azula's manipulation: a valuable ally to stand up against the Fire Nation's tyranny.

Ursa wondered if she hadn't become obsolete in those short five years.

"Are you going to _say_ something?" Azula asked after several moments. "After all you put on quite a show to get rid of those three."

"You've grown so much," said Ursa in effort to say something rather than nothing. Plunging in deep all at once didn't seem a wise idea. "Now that all the baby fat has melted away I find you don't look very much like your father."

"_No_," the girl put out. "All the old generals and admirals say that I look like you, not to my face naturally, though I am far less of a pampered pet useful only for producing heirs. Beauty _and_ brains – the best features of either parent. Looks like Zuko got cheated."

"Can you utter a single sentence without being insulting? Can we speak of more pleasant matters?"

"Pleasant, you say? Such as?"

"Any boyfriends? Did you attend the Golden Dragon Dance this year?"

"Boyfriends?" Azula scoffed and the thought brought up her failed attempts at Ember Island. "I think I'm a little preoccupied at the current time to beat some spineless wimp into such bondage. I have the rebels to stomp out once and for all, but enough about me how are _you_?"

"Was it true what Katara said?" Ursa said instead. "That you were going to kill me?"

"I have a reputation to keep in front of these people." She crossed her arms. "If you tell them though consider that threat-"

"Yes, I understand, which brings us to the real question," The space between them had somehow lessened slightly. "Why have you come?"

Azula said nothing.

"You may have to keep secrets from everyone else but you don't have to do so from me. I am your ear. I always have been."

Somewhere hidden in the corners of Azula's mind scenes played out of her being a small child along with her brother of the times when she would invite herself into Zuko's chambers and refuse to leave so she and he could listen to their mother's stories, stories she herself had been told by her own mother, known by heart but revised through a new storyteller. Zuko would always fall asleep before the story reached its end, mumbling about riding dragons and such, but Azula stayed awake to the end, intrigued rather than lulled to sleep. She would crawl into her mother's lap and talk about anything and everything she could think of and Ursa would let her until she'd worn her little body out.

Not one person born into the world was born evil. Azula had once been innocent like any other child.

"You remember, don't you?" asked Ursa when Azula still said nothing. "You were very small then but-"

"I may have some faint recollection," remarked Azula without a great deal of care.

For the first half of their lives Zuko and Azula had been raised by their mother and the palace servants as Ozai had not much interest in an investment not yet ripe enough to bear him fruit. Ursa had watched them take their first steps, utter their first words; she had done everything by herself while her husband would hardly spare the three a passing glance between his rulings. It was a mixed blessing for Ursa to be a more or less a single parent, when the children hardly knew their own father's face, but after a time she found with some trepidation that she preferred a random servant to look after the children in her absence rather than her war-hungry husband.

No matter that current times were not the best their family of three had grown together happily. Like only a little sister could, Azula could be a secretive sort of bully and Zuko could get snappy at little things but Ursa had loved them along with their faults and tried to steer them in the right direction. Such a direction came one day when a six-year-old Zuko had come running into his mother's morning tea with the other noblewomen with an injured turtle-duck in his hands. Azula came in shortly after and cuffed her brother over the head for his disrespect but Ursa had stopped to see what was the matter despite disapproving looks from the other ladies.

"Give it here, Zuko," she told her tear stricken boy.

The turtle-duck had hardly grown into its adult feathers but already its wing was broken badly and would die if left alone. Ursa could see that it pained Zuko to do but he'd had to tie the animal's beak shut so that it wouldn't peck at him in defense.

"The other ducks were being mean to it," Zuko sobbed. "They kept stealing its food, they-"

"Fix it, Mommy," contributed Azula now that they had already breached the doors. "It's hurting."

The two had waited on the outside decks of the palace's botanical gardens, waiting and worrying over the fate of the little animal inside. Back then Zuko had wrapped an arm around his sister's shoulder. Azula hadn't said something mean or pulled away. She leaned against him for comfort.

To two little children ten minutes passed by like ten hours until the door was pulled back.

"He looks funny," were the first words out of Azula's mouth.

"_She_ looks funny," Ursa corrected, holding the hen in her hands, the stout little animal sporting a sling and ruffling her breast feathers with irritated quacks. "Now it's going to take a while for her to get better so-"

Zuko jumped to his feet in excitement. "So she'll be our pet?"

"We get to name her?" joined in Azula, bouncing in place.

"Yes, I suppose but-"

"Yea!" the two chorused happily.

Their mother couldn't help chuckling but continued on, "I'm going to need the both of you to help me if she's going to heal. It may not always be the most fun of work; you're going to have to put up with a grumpy turtle-duck but-"

"Okay!"

After much debate between it, throwing seeds at the other as the duck nestled between them napping, it was decided for their pet's name to be Keiko – Ursa had blended Zuko and Azula's top two choices into one name they could both agree on.

Like Ursa had warned much of the care process wasn't fun but the two kept at it anyway and she had to harry after them when they couldn't bring the duck to their lessons and in place of a stuffed animal to sleep with. Still they had plenty of fun splashing around with Keiko at bath time as she swam circles all around them, giving them playful nips, making them squeal in delight and get more water on the floor than in. When the time to set Keiko free came Zuko had made a poor attempt at hiding her in a cupboard and Azula had tried what she could to distract Ursa but to no avail. It was a tearful goodbye for them all but one not to last as Keiko returned every spring after. They could tell it was her by the stripe on her shell.

One day, when Azula was eight and Zuko nine, they were out feeding Keiko bread along with their mother and cousin Lu Ten.

The Fire Lord approached.

"Azula,"

Keiko gave an angry honk and swam away, her row of six ducklings following noisily behind.

Ursa knew that he had come to lay claim over the more promising of his children, to prep that child to take over when he had passed. She had just hoped that it wouldn't have happened so soon. In the passing years while Zuko remained the same sweetling he always was she saw her daughter less and less and Azula's talk of innocent things turned to scoffing at the water tribe people taken from their homes and imprisoned for life, things a child her age should not have reveled in. She became more interested in watching animals in pain rather than helping them.

Though she saw Azula every day at dinner Ursa knew that she was losing her more and more with each passing day. She could only stand by and watch it happen, hope that Azula's first eight years had accounted for something. As far as they had started to drift as was the transition amplified when in their talks Azula noticed her mother's sad nodding, unable to praise anything she said. Ursa's parenting to her daughter had turned into a reign of scolding and punishments.

Azula had turned to her father who would acknowledge and let her do what she want and so the Fire Lord and Fire Lady were left to live separate yet close lives each with their single child. How very long it had been since they'd had a simple mother-daughter talk.

"I'm sure you can figure out why I've come," said Azula in the present day, "Even if we're strangers now."

Ursa had suspected. Now she knew it to be true.

"This sickness you have…it almost took your life." She hadn't the nerve to ask if that was Azula's only selfish reason. She wouldn't have been answered anyway. "Can you tell me what happened?"

Surprisingly enough, Azula seemed to be waiting for her to ask. "It was some cleaning girl; had this sickness so many times that she was carrying it once again without ever knowing. With those filthy hands she folded the sheets of my bed every day."

"Go on,"

But, in being told to do so, Azula didn't. She couldn't however stop her thoughts from drifting that way and replaying how things had gone down. A great blow to her pride, she'd actually fainted in the palace halls like some ditzy little maid-in-waiting. When she awoke Azula was bathed in sweat and in her bed surrounded by healers but rather than feeling relieved for the treatment she felt suffocated and she wanted to blast them all but the sickness had hit her fast and it hit _hard_ and she couldn't block out the great fever and disorientation to fire even a single blast.

Once the cause was revealed Azula had ordered the hapless cleaning girl to prison among the brutes and criminals of the Fire Nation and it still hadn't made her feel any better. The blistering rash took up nearly every inch of her flesh that made her look worse than Zuko ever had, any liquid she took in she seemed to sweat out twice as much and she was always, _always_ uncomfortable in the worst way.

It was something she couldn't fight with flames or fists and she suffered worse than any peasant.

For the first two contagious days Azula was quarantined and for her reputation the healers finished their duties with great speed and Azula was alone staring at the ceiling, all day, all night, very much like in recent days entrapped in Toph's stone. Her whole body was a fleshy lump of hurt and the only release she had was when it pulled her into sleep.

Then the Fire Lord came. He wore a mask to eliminate the spread of any germs.

"F-Father," she'd choked out at the blurry image before her but she couldn't bow to him in respect.

"Revolting," he had said in distaste of how her skin had broken out. "You've picked a _fine_ time to develop such a sickness, my dear. The verge of at long last putting an end to this inane war and my star pupil decides to put herself out of commission."

"I'm…_healing_."

"You think I know not after all these years the liar you are?" he said, fingering over a case of rouge on her dresser. "Come now."

He shattered the rouge against the polished wood and, despite herself, Azula flinched.

"Everything was in place! _Everything_ perfect!" His voice rose with every word. He spoke as though it were her fault for getting sick, ranted on about how losing the command of their princess could be detrimental in a given situation, and it wasn't long until he was breaking more of Azula's possessions in rage, shattering them beyond repair on the floor.

Splinters of the chair of her writing desk sprinkled over her bed sheets and still Azula could only lay there. What was worse, being only slightly unnerved by her father's abrupt and furious destruction all around her did more to her condition and restricted her airways so that she had to struggle to breathe. Only a fool wouldn't have been frightened at that and Azula was no fool.

Fear amplified it further.

"F-Father…_h-healer!_"

Azula gasped and heaved in her bedding and her father continued his destruction. When Ozai finally noticed her he took her in not with the caring a father should but with disgust at her weakness, she the perfect ruler he had created reduced to a sweating mess.

He neared her and suddenly Azula wanted him very far away.

"What to do with a broken tool," murmured Ozai, kneeling down at her bedside as she continued to heave. "I wouldn't want to unnecessarily waste the most expensive of medicines on a lost cause. You must understand that, Azula."

"Father," she managed to say, "I am your loyal daughter."

"_Please Father, I only had the Fire Nation's best interests at heart,_" a young voice echoed in her mind. "_I'm sorry I spoke out of turn. I meant you no disrespect. I am your loyal son._"

Through no fault of her own Azula was now in the same place Zuko had been all those years ago. She was under the Fire Lord's mercy, unable to fight him in her condition. Visions flashed of him lighting her bed ablaze with her still on it.

"Though you are a most valuable piece," Ozai said in minor regret, "You are not more so than my entire nation of able soldiers. I will grant you three days to recover and three only." Saying nothing more, he left her chambers.

The current Fire Lord was still a young enough man, that Azula had seen one day when he had been discerning from a lineup of the most beautiful noblewoman to make his second wife. Maybe his new child would be as smart and talented as she. She could be replaced.

In her thrashing a sweaty lock of hair had drawn over her face: a minor annoyance she couldn't rid herself of.

A slender hand brushed it from the way and Azula's fever-baked mind went to her mother, impossible as it was, but it was an elderly healer woman she vaguely remembered from the sessions, not pretty but her wrinkled face friendly.

"The lord sent me, highness," said the woman, giving a short bow.

The cool drink of water she brought was a small comfort when Azula thought the pain had reached its peak and death was near. Somewhere in those countless lonely hours her thoughts came to how everyone in her life she had pushed away. Zuko had chosen the enemy over her, Mai had chosen Zuko and Ty Lee had chosen Mai and now none of them were there for her as she lay so ill.

If she had died then no one would have cared. No one would have mourned and she'd have had no one to blame but herself.

In only hours the old woman had come back with a cup of frothing liquid.

"It's an old family recipe, highness," she'd said. "Not an official remedy in any textbook but it would cure my children and grandchildren up in a snap whenever they caught this sickness. Yours is plenty more severe but-"

Without the energy for anything else, Azula's head dropped in a nod, giving consent for the medicine. It had breathed life back into her veins, made her able to move and walk again, and so when the woman returned again to check on her Azula had been writing something in her lap.

"Highness?" the old woman ventured.

"This is a pardon for that granddaughter of yours in prison," said Azula, thrusting the paper her way. "Henceforth you and her are banned from this palace. Now go before I change my mind!"

Under orders Azula was back in her plated armor all too soon, stumbling instead of walking with grace, a part of the war room conferences when she could barely sit up right. An occasional general would glance at her in worry but was not so foolish to speak up.

She couldn't force her attention to top notch so picked out the key elements of conversation in case she was called upon.

A minor issue however roused her attention.

"You've captured Mother – I mean, the former Fire Lady?"

"Yes," said the Fire Lord as though it wasn't worth his attention. "Her execution date is set in a week's time."

Azula would not let the issue pass. "Pardon my tongue, Father, but is this not a waste of resources? The Fire Lady has kept her head low for all these years. She is not a threat and no one would believe the likes of a peasant anyway."

"Yes, but why take that chance?"

The meeting ended with her opinion forgotten and her sent on a mission to check on the current status of Ba Sing Se to see that it was the same as she had left it. Azula had been all packed and ready to go.

When the fork in the hall came something came over her and she went left instead of right…and the result was her now residing in an unknown cave with the only person left in the world not jaded enough to see only the monstrous half of her personality.

"Zuko was your favorite," she murmured and it was almost just her lips moving so quiet was she.

"I never said such a thing," answered Ursa, taking a firm stance on the matter. "I never said you were a monster or talked ill of you in any way. You filled those blanks in yourself. True, I might've preferred Zuko's _behaviors_ over yours at times but that was all."

Azula looked up from all the miserable thoughts that had been spiraling in her head and she saw her mother standing there right before, closer than anyone else would dare.

"Azula," Ursa's voice was gentle as she placed her hands over her daughter's arms, "I love you. I love you no more or less than your brother. I would not just forget about you."

Not so open was she to accept the same hug that Zuko had received but Azula stood where she did without movement when she was touched and those words filled her ears. Gold eyes stared past anything the caves held in thought.

"_This_ is the answer to what everyone's been asking me?" she wondered aloud. "Why I put in all this effort?"

Ursa leveled her gaze to her daughter's to try to gauge what she was thinking.

All in one movement Azula's eyes shut tight, she exhaled with a huff and struck her mother's hands away from her like they burned. She backed away and when she reopened her eyes again her face had reverted back to its normal expression of meanness.

"Azula?"

"Everyone has a lapse of judgment at least one in their lifetime," said Azula without shame. "It would seem even I am not immune. Easy for such a thing to happen when a person's mind and body is still fighting off a would-be killer illness."

"Azula," Ursa pressing, willing for her not to take this path.

"Father may have made me what I am today but with any luck he and the Avatar will finish each other off when they finally face off. Flawed is the family a person is born into. The one I create when I seize the crown will be superior in every way."

Azula turned to look at her one last time. "Thanks anyway, Mother."

Ursa watched her go and knew that she could not follow.

As soon as Azula reached the exit of the caves Katara, Zuko and Toph stopped everything they were doing and focused on her every movement with an eagle eye (or foot) when she came to a stop before them.

Azula raised a palm to her side and in it came to life a blue ball of flame.

Taking it as a challenge, the three all reared back ready to attack, Katara with a length of water wrapped at her back like a boa, Toph making the earth beneath them quiver and Zuko there with them like he'd been there from the beginning.

Instead of attacking, Azula lowered her hand and the flame went out. Her head rose and she glared full on at every one of them, even at Toph who couldn't see her.

"See you on the battlefield," she hissed in farewell.

She made her way down the ledge and onto the long journey that awaited her back to the palace.

End

Well there you go. Thanks everyone for tuning in!

Arual-san


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